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HUMAN MOTIVES 



MIND AND HEALTH SERIES 

Edited by H. Addington Bruce, A.M. 



4UMAN MOTIVES 



BY 



JAMES JACKSON PUTNAM, ; M.D. 

PROFESSOR EMERITUS, DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS 
SYSTEM, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 




BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1915 



Copyright, 1915, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 



All rights reserved 
Published, May, 1915 



Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cashing Co., Norwood, Mass. , U.S.A. 
Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass. , U. S.A. 



MAY 24 1915 
©GI.A398993 



EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 

THIS is one of a series of handbooks 
designed to extend knowledge of 
the important discoveries affect- 
ing individual and social welfare that have 
been made during recent years through 
psychological research. Most of the books 
in the series will deal with special problems 
as illumined by the results of investigations 
aiming directly at their solution. But the 
present volume is of a more general charac- 
ter, having as its main purpose the focus- 
sing of attention on the aid afforded by 
modern psychology to the upbuilding of a 
really sound and practical philosophy of 
life. 

Undoubtedly the outstanding feature of 
the psychological researches of the past 



EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 

quarter of a century has been the explora- 
tion of that vast, and previously almost 
unknown, region of the human mind 
termed "the subconscious." The dis- 
covery that complicated mental processes 
may, and constantly do, go on beneath the 
threshold of consciousness, and that these 
processes include a dynamic action perpet- 
ually and profoundly affecting "the con- 
scious self" for good or for ill, has led to 
further discoveries that have already been 
turned to good account. 

Particularly helpful has been the demon- 
stration of the permanence of the ex- 
perience and memories of the first years of 
life, and the role played by them as deter- 
minants of adult character, behavior, and 
health. There has even come into being a 
new department of medicine, based on this 
proved relationship of subconscious mem- 
ories and certain maladies — the psycho- 
neuroses, or functional nervous and mental 
disorders. 

vi 



EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 

But it is not only to the physician that 
the exploration of the subconscious has 
been of great helpfulness. Its results are 
equally important to the parent, the educa- 
tor, the social reformer. Indeed, as Doctor 
Putnam makes clear, they are of prime 
significance to all of us. 

For one thing, knowledge of them gives 
us a far better understanding of ourselves 
and our fellows, thereby leading to greater 
insight into means of self-improvement, 
and leading also to a more tolerant and 
just view of those about us. And, fully 
as important, the results of modern investi- 
gation of the subconscious point the way, 
when properly considered, to a surer grasp 
of the meaning of the universe and our own 
place in it. They have, that is to say, a 
philosophical and spiritual as well as a 
psychological value. 

This it is Doctor Putnam's effort to es- 
tablish, and the result is a volume that 
should bring encouragement to all oppressed 

vii 



EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 

by the seeming impossibility of reconciling 
the intuitions of religious faith with the 
dictates of modern science. That the find- 
ings of the field of science — medical psy- 
chology — in which Doctor Putnam him- 
self has so long and ably labored, tend to 
reinforce, not weaken, religious conviction, 
is his firm belief; and he has presented 
his reasons for this belief with admirable 
candor and force. 

Apart from this larger aspect, his book is 
of direct value to his readers because of 
the light it throws on the subject with 
which it is primarily concerned — human 
motives. The hidden impulses that so 
often hurry us to rash actions; the weeds 
in our minds that need to be uprooted lest 
they obtain a fatal dominance over our 
constructive energies; the secret sources 
of harmful habits — on all of these Doctor 
Putnam turns the revealing gleam of psy- 
chological analysis. 

Throughout he rightly emphasizes the 
viii 



EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 

importance of studying motives with refer- 
ence to the dynamic forces that underlie 
them, rather than with reference to their 
face value ; and, attacking them from this 
better point of view, he brings to every 
reader a message of personal importance. 

H. ADDINGTON BRUCE. 



IX 



PREFACE 

De potiori designatio 

(An act or motive is not clearly understood until 
it has been defined in terms of its most significant 
meanings.) 

THE practical importance for the 
study of motives of the sentiment 
that this Latin line so tersely ren- 
ders, has impressed itself strongly on my 
mind in the course of the past two years. 
During this period I have had occasion to 
study men's motives at close range, and 
have become convinced that in order to 
understand them fully one should define 
them very clearly in such terms as will 
indicate the greatest dangers and the best 
hopes toward which they point. Motives 

xi 



PREFACE 

are at best such mixed affairs, and the 
chances are so many for deceiving ourselves 
as to the deeper bearings of our thoughts 
and acts, that the temptation instinctively 
to take advantage of one or another of these 
opportunities is almost irresistible. 

One of the most striking ways in which 
men acknowledge the ties that bind them 
to their fellows is through accepting social 
standards in the interpretation of their 
own intentions. The conventions of a 
society endorse or justify many an act 
and many a failure to act, behind which 
motives lie which in the case of one or 
another given person may be of a sort 
that social conventions did not and could 
not contemplate. A word or act that 
means little to one person may thrill with 
emotion for another, and no general rule 
as to their use or avoidance could possibly 
be adopted. Every one must judge for 
himself in such matters, but to do this in 
any thorough-going fashion, — to the ex- 

xii 



PREFACE 

tent, for example, of espousing an unpopu- 
lar cause, or of seeing through and perhaps 
abandoning a strong prejudice, or of assum- 
ing voluntarily a serious responsibility ; — 
to do this means to prove oneself pos- 
sessed of unusual strength of character and 
will. The situation here involved is made 
more complex through the fact that while 
the temptation is strong to shrink from 
assuming full responsibility for our acts 
and from facing out our obscurer and 
deeper-lying motives, it is an easy matter, 
by going a short distance in these direc- 
tions, to persuade ourselves that we have 
gone a long distance. And it is easy 
also to utilize self-biame in such a way as 
to secure a sense of satisfaction through 
which no real change of temperament is 
brought about. 

For reasons such as these, and especially 
in view of a series of important practical 
investigations to which attention will be 
called, it has seemed to me worth while 

siii 



PREFACE 

to emphasize the importance of training 
ourselves to see, gleaming through our 
immediate and partial motives, a back- 
ground of stronger tendencies from which 
these motives derive their main signifi- 
cance. I believe, on the one hand, that 
men are more strongly bound than they 
usually recognize, by a sense of obligations 
definable as " ideal." Whatever name one 
may choose for these ties, they are virtu- 
ally religious in their nature, and the rec- 
ognition of them often gives rise to a 
feeling of new birth. The sense of these 
obligations, even though unacknowledged 
or denied, makes itself felt through the 
host of lesser motives. 

On the other hand, men are handi- 
capped by passions, longings, personal am- 
bitions, cravings for success and mastery, 
to a degree of which they are never wholly 
conscious. Not only a portion of men's 
acts but all of them derive some coloring 
from these sources. The influences under- 
xiv 



PREFACE 

lying them are not to be designated as 
bad, but as tendencies needing to be appre- 
ciated and utilized in the service of prog- 
ress of the best sort. 

Such progress implies constant re-inter- 
pretation of our motives with reference 
both to the desires and instincts which 
belong to us by virtue of our evolutional 
history and those which belong to us by 
virtue of our social relationships, con- 
strued in the widest possible sense. 

In the first chapter I propose to carry 
further the description of these two main 
sources of motives, and to indicate the 
relative significance of the two correspond- 
ing modes of approach to the study of 
them, — namely, the philosophic and the 
psycho-analytic methods. 

The second chapter will take up the 
relation of the individual to the creative 
energy which underlies the universe. This 
will be done for the purpose of suggesting 
a rational basis for the religious concep- 

XV 



PREFACE 

tions which are taken as constituting one 
source of human motives. 

In the third chapter the history of the 
psycho-analytic movement will be given 
at greater length. 

In the fourth chapter some of the prin- 
ciples brought to light through psycho- 
analysis and their interest for educators 
will be pointed out. 

In the fifth chapter a number of ques- 
tions already discussed will be taken up 
afresh on the basis of certain simple dia- 
grams. 

In the sixth chapter it will be shown 
that human progress is to be regarded as 
equivalent to the discovery of new rela- 
tionships between the inner world of one's 
own spirit and the world of empirical 
experience. 

JAMES JACKSON PUTNAM, M.D. 

April 12, 1915. 



xvi 



CONTENTS 



OHAPTEB 

Editorial Introduction 


PAGE 

V 




Preface 


xi 


I. 


Main Sources of Motives . 


1 


II. 


The Rational Basis of Religion 


35 


III. 


The Psycho-Analytic Movement 


67 


IV. 


Educational Bearings of Psycho- 






analysis 


105 


V. 


Instincts and Ideals ; 


134 


VI. 


An Attempt at Synthesis . 


165 


Index 


177 



XVll 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

Chapter I 

Main Sources of Motives 

"A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery 
of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or 
some other favorable event raises your spirits, and 
you think good days are preparing for you. Do not 
believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but your- 
self. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph 
of principles." — R. W. Emerson. 

IN spite of the innumerable partial 
influences in obedience to which we 
act, our motives are mainly traceable 
to the conjoined action of two different and 
apparently antagonistic sets of tendencies, 
related to our rational aspirations on the 
one hand and to our emotional repressions 
on the other. To define these tendencies 

1 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

in such a way as to bring out the contrast 
between them, yet with the aim of showing 
that the differences underlying this con- 
trast are susceptible of being reconciled in 
a new and rational synthesis, is the pur- 
pose of this book. 

I shall call these two sorts of motives, 
provisionally, motives of constructiveness 
and motives of adaptation, but it will 
appear that the sources from which they 
spring are not fully indicated by these 
names. A motive summarizes the life his- 
tory of the individual who entertains it, 
and, like the individual himself, may be said 
to stand at the point of intersection of 
numerous lines of energy, each of which 

"Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar." 

The main lines of energy with which a man 
must reckon represent, on the one hand, his 
evolutional, biologic history, with all that 
that implies in the way of half-blind self- 
assertion, temptation, struggle, victory, and 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

defeat; and, on the other hand, his spirit- 
ual history, — that is, his relationship to 
the life of the universe as a whole. To feel 
the right to assert this relationship and the 
ability to recognize its bearings entails on 
human beings the same sort of responsi- 
bility that the members of an intrinsically 
noble family feel with regard to the main- 
tenance of its traditions. "Noblesse oblige" 

Really to know a thing or to understand 
a situation means more than to be able to 
recognize it when met again. It means to 
know what it stands for and what it may 
lead to, to be acquainted with its history, 
and to appreciate as the essential element 
in that history the creative energy which 
made the thing or situation what it is, and 
which has a significance far transcending 
the meaning of this particular and partial 
manifestation of its capacity to create. 

This principle is peculiarly important 
where motives are in question. That which 
one most needs to know about a man is 

3 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

his deeper-lying trends of character and 
their source. This knowledge is difficult to 
gain, but the search is of a worthy sort and 
should not be hampered by the passing of 
judgments which might have been deferred. 
Praising and blaming, whether of others or 
of oneself, often imply motives which are 
not what they appear to be. We ought to 
take sides definitely, for good and against 
evil. But in order to do this to good pur- 
pose we need to have a more realizing sense 
of the nature and the history of our own 
personal tendencies — both the influences 
that imprison us within the toils of self- 
indulgence and those that make us free — 
and of the same and kindred tendencies in 
the history of mankind. 

It usually happens that men are moved 
by broader and better motives than they 
are consciously aware of, and that to be so 
moved is, virtually, to acknowledge obliga- 
tions of which the final implication can be 
expressed only in ideal terms. 

4 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

We are told by botanists that the root- 
lets of many plants extend far more widely 
than an ordinary inspection would sug- 
gest. Between the rows in our vegetable 
gardens delicate fibrils are said to extend 
to such a distance and in such fineness 
that only special methods of investigation 
are able to detect them; and yet their 
existence is important for the well-being 
of the plant to which they lead. But if 
the plant is dependent upon what happens 
in these distant and unseen fibrils, so, a 
thousand times more and in a far more 
complex sense, are the trends of character, 
temperament, and desire of a human 
being determined by the unseen rootlets 
of emotional interest that extend far around 
him into the remotest corner of his past 
life, into the lives of other men and into a 
foreshadowed life that he can call, inferen- 
tially, his own. Emerson has said, with 
just insight: "The fiend that man harries 
is love of the best." It is, however, 

5 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

equally true that he is harried by a half- 
knowledge of his hampering and repressed 
desires. Between these two poles he moves, 
and from their influence his various mo- 
tives gain their strength. 

The instinctive, though unspoken, recog- 
nition of the first of these poles of origin is 
affirmed by men's willingness to live and 
to die for results that they can never see, 
and could not possibly define unless by 
saying, perhaps, that they knew in what 
direction and in obedience to what prin- 
ciples these ends were to be sought. When 
one looks closely at the influences that 
inspire to patriotism, for example, it be- 
comes clear that behind the love of country 
there lies a love of humanity and justice 
and freedom. Lovelace's inspiring lines, 

"I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
Lov'd I not honour more," 

express a range of thought analogous to 
many that pass unexpressed. But the 
best final term of such thoughts is not 

6 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

always held before the mind; nor is it 
sufficiently realized to what extent these 
broader motives are mixed with others, 
which are mischievous largely because they 
are unconsciously entertained and are there- 
fore unregulated by the conscious reason. 

To ask what this best final term would 
be is virtually equivalent to asking whether 
there is any rational goal of human life. 
This question can, I think, be confidently 
answered. But the acknowledgement of 
such a goal would imply the conscious 
acknowledgement of ideal relationships, 
definable in religious terms, though equally 
susceptible of philosophic definition. 

Beyond the communities and social 
groups with which we are familiar and 
which we feel ourselves under obligation 
to uphold, it is easy to imagine others 
which we can conceive of as, in a practical 
sense, still better, and to recognize that 
in them the higher, more constructive 
qualities of men fashioned like ourselves 

7 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

would find a freer chance of expression. 
But, as beyond this humanly possible 
community we must believe in the exist- 
ence of an ideal community, just as be- 
yond the picturable world of time and 
space we must believe in the existence 
of an unpicturable world of power, made 
intelligible to us through the sense that 
we have of our own constructive powers. 

Constructiveness is seen to the best ad- 
vantage in the daily affairs of life at those 
moments when the reason, the intuition, 
and the will place the individual nearest to 
his ideal best. Only then can he accomplish 
the utmost of which he is capable toward 
the establishment of the best tendencies 
in human affairs. But "the best in one- 
self" is only to be stated in terms of a 
creative energy greater than can find ex- 
pression in any finite life. 

The question as to what one ought to 
consider the final measure of constructive- 
ness, — that is, the question as to the final 

8 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

standard by which one may regulate one's 
motives and deeds, — does not admit, in- 
deed, of an answer that would be acceptable 
to all persons ; but the basis for an answer 
is given through the study of one's own 
intelligence, freedom, and will. We live 
in a social world of persons and recognize 
that we are bound to some of them by 
mutual interest and affection. It is not 
only to these persons as standing for them- 
selves alone, however, that we are bound, 
but still more to them as representing the 
forces that help to make them what they 
are and that underlie our own lives, — the 
forces represented by the ties of family, 
church, state. But these bonds pass over 
into still wider bonds, ideally definable, and 
there is no rational stopping-place until 
one reaches the point of vantage whence it 
is possible to see clearly that there are ties 
which bind all the parts of our universe, 
apparently so shifting and incongruous, 
into one. When the true nature of these 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

ties is seen, many of the incongruities may 
be found to result from the freedom inher- 
ent in the parts of this system of things. 
For if freedom is present at all, it must 
be present everywhere. The excellence 
that we conceive of is an excellence that 
we can approach in practice. And if it 
thus exists in us it must exist in some sense, 
in the universe of which we are a part. 

How little are most of us aware of the 
existence and availability of these great 
forces of creative energy! Why is this 
so? What is the nature and what the 
origin of the tangle of hampering influences 
by which we are encompassed, and which 
prevent us from being what we might 
otherwise become? This inquiry brings 
us face to face with the second class of 
motives, and a hint as to its answer is 
given in the very eagerness that prompts 
the question. Men are creatures of long- 
ing, and they would never do their best 
if this were not the case. This longing 

10 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

may be based on a genuine and intense 
desire for the accomplishment of what 
their intelligence and reason stamp as 
best; or it may be a longing for personal 
gratification and ambition. 

The power which should show itself in 
deeds of the best sort often evaporates in 
the expression of a sentiment that de- 
scribes how fine such deeds would be if 
done. Strong and elusive passions are 
at work in us which we must learn to 
utilize for good ends, at the cost, if we do 
not, of seeing them master us in the inter- 
ests of ends that are undesirable, It is 
as if antagonistic groups of spirits were 
competing eagerly for the control of our 
motives and emotions and even of our 
thoughts and acts. These spirits are our 
better selves and our less good selves, or 
our more mature and relatively immature 
selves, striving for mastery. The person 
who chooses the expedient and sets aside 
the better is not simply one who fails to 

11 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

do his best ; he is one who virtually accepts 
the domination of something in himself 
of which he hardly realizes the presence or 
the force, and who yields to the strong pull 
of an instinctive longing which demands 
an outlet and of which it is our business to 
understand the nature. 

The motives of every one of us vary 
extremely in detail, according to the par- 
ticular circumstances which give rise to 
them; the point of essential interest is, 
however, that they are very apt to imply 
the presence of repressed emotions of which 
we are unconscious but which neverthe- 
less live within us as relatively independent, 
active agents that can exert a strong 
influence on our conduct and our thoughts. 

This situation will be made clearer if 
we pause to consider under what condi- 
tions the conflicts and repressions arise, 
in dealing with which men have to call 
compromises and adaptations to their aid. 
Stated in broad terms, it may be said that 

12 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

all created beings have a certain amount 
of freedom, and that by virtue of this 
freedom their interests are bound to clash. 
This freedom, furthermore, applies not 
alone to men themselves, regarded as 
units, but also to the thoughts and emotions 
of men, especially those that, having been 
expelled (through "repression") from the 
society of that special group of feelings 
which we elect to call "ourselves," become 
organized and systematized into "com- 
plexes," — somewhat as the Miltonic Satan, 
cast out of heaven, organized himself in 
hell. The difference between a "complex" 
and a person is immense, in detail; but 
the resemblance is also well defined, and 
a certain amount of individuality and 
freedom may be ascribed to the former as 
well as to the latter. 

The reason that "repression" gains its 
position of importance in our lives is that 
there are many emotional desires which 
make a strong appeal yet which the de- 

13 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

mands of social convention and our own 
consciences forbid us openly to acknowl- 
edge. The repression of an emotion does 
not mean necessarily its elimination. On 
the contrary, it may secure its preserva- 
tion in a very undesirable and deeply 
rooted form. Prejudices are based upon 
repression, and every one is aware how 
utterly unreasonable they are, how they 
resist the educative influences of experi- 
ence, and with what virulence they inject 
themselves into our lives and hamper or 
modify our judgments. The same is true 
of superstition. Into a world of social 
conventions every child is born, but he 
is born, too, with a capacity to entertain 
longings and cravings. We wish for pleas- 
ure; we find that we must conform to 
rules. The result is the adoption of com- 
promises in which both pleasure and con- 
formity find themselves represented, even 
if only by the aid of symbols. 

It must be clearly understood, as a 
14 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

fact of great significance, that a man is 
never exclusively the expression of his own 
ideals, a disembodied soul nourishing itself 
on inspiration and the worship of the best. 
On the contrary, he has a body and an 
evolutional history, a strong sense of 
separate individuality and physiological 
needs. But these conditions of existence, 
if in one sense they antagonize the influ- 
ence of the spirit which is immanent in 
all men and which keeps alive in them 
an ideal of brotherhood, are nevertheless 
capable of making that brotherhood more 
real in another way. Limitation is the 
necessary condition of effort and the results 
of limitation figure, inevitably, sometimes 
as good, sometimes as evil. Even our 
ideals would not have their present form 
were it not that our lot is cast in a world 
of limitation, in which progress is possible 
only through conscious effort, compromise 
and adaptation. 
But compromise and adaptation have a 
15 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

deep root also in the egoistic desires of 
infancy, when cultivated too much in and 
for themselves and too little as a bridge 
leading to better things. Even the best 
men and women may be torn by the con- 
flicts to which the cravings of infantile 
origin gave rise, and some of the fine 
persons whom Dante places in his Hell 
or allows to toil painfully up the steep 
sides of the Hill of Purgatory are of this 
description. Society demands loyalty and 
severely punishes its disloyal members, 
even though the tendency to be disloyal 
may have overwhelmed them unawares. 
That these cravings have this consequence 
needs emphasis ; for so conspicuously neces- 
sary and useful are acts done under the 
influence of motives of compromise and 
adaptation that it is difficult to get a 
hearing for the arguments which show in 
what subtle ways, and yet with what 
poignant force, they are apt to make 
themselves our masters and to restrain 

16 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

us from allowing our best desires to rule. 
Endowed with freedom as we are, and 
compelled by our own nature to bring 
into existence and to maintain as fantasies, 
groups of thoughts and emotions which, 
in their turn, are relatively free, we do not 
realize that our own creations may become 
our tyrants, — our Frankensteins. In a 
measure, these dangers are the school- 
masters of the child. Old or young, in 
order to succeed, we must court danger 
and failure, must assert ourselves, and 
must abandon the hope of certainty. In 
compensation for this sacrifice we gain 
the chance to enjoy a growing sense of 
strength, the perception, as we grow older, 
of light breaking on the darkness, the 
feeling of constantly increasing compan- 
ionship, and the evidence that in some sense 
our journey may have a reasonable end. 
But at every stage of the journey we are 
obliged, in order that the next step may 
be taken more safely, to make choices and 

17 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

decisions. The choices and decisions of 
the organisms whose lives prepared the 
way, through seons of time, for ours, present 
themselves to us as instincts, and these 
instincts place forces in our hands which 
we are under constant temptation to abuse. 
Corresponding to the two sorts of motives 
which I have designated constructive and 
adaptive, there are two modes of approach 
to the investigation of our motives. One 
of them is that with which every person is 
more or less familiar under the form of 
philosophical reasoning, especially as the 
philosophy of religion. In order to gain 
the best knowledge of human nature by 
this method, we ought, first of all, to con- 
sider man at his best, as he is when in 
the full flood of intelligent realization of 
his own possibilities and in the full flood 
of his power to make sacrifices, to form 
rational ideals, to see into and beyond 
actual situations to the meanings and the 
values that lie concealed in them. Hav- 

18 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

ing learned, through a contemplation and 
scrutiny such as this, to appreciate the 
nature of men at their best and to recog- 
nize the capacity in them to work for the 
most constructive social and ideal ends, 
we have the right to feel ourselves pre- 
pared to see the true nature of the processes 
that characterize those tendencies in the 
lives of men which prevent them from con- 
forming systematically to their own ideals. 
At each point it is possible to trace the 
influence of these tendencies, assuming 
the guise of needful compromise and ad- 
aptation, though based on the instinctive 
desire to preserve motives and emotions 
which those who entertain them unawares 
would fain think themselves to have ban- 
ished altogether. 

The mature man is a more natural ob- 
ject of primary study than the immature 
man or the child, because the traits that 
make him mature correspond to the traits 
with which we, as rational beings, enter 

19 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

on our task. To accustom ourselves to the 
study of immaturity and childhood before 
proceeding to the study of maturity and 
manhood is often to habituate ourselves 
to an undesirable limitation of our vision 
with reference to the scope of the enter- 
prise on which we enter. 

The second mode of approach is through 
what has been called the "psycho-analytic 
method," which is to all intents and pur- 
poses a form of the "genetic method." 
The genetic method is that best known to us 
as the Darwinian mode of studying or- 
ganic and psychologic evolution, and resem- 
bles that mode of research in the respect 
that both of them begin with the appar- 
ently simpler manifestations of life and 
proceed from these toward the appar- 
ently more complex forms. 

I do not rank the philosophic and the 
genetic modes of approach as equally signifi- 
cant in all respects for the study of human 
life, but as indispensable, each of them to the 

20 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

other. If one had to choose between them, 
it would be more important to secure the 
benefits that flow from the study of men 
at their best and in their strength, than 
as they appear when seen at their second 
best and in their immaturity and weak- 
ness. But, for my part, I feel grateful 
for having had the opportunity of appre- 
ciating the benefit of each one of these 
sources of knowledge of mankind, because 
I feel sure that neither, alone, can give us 
what we need. And I shall endeavor to 
point out that failure to acquire the kind 
of knowledge which comes through the 
use of the psycho-analytic method, and 
especially the attitude of resistance which 
makes men unwilling to seek this knowl- 
edge and leads them to misunderstand its 
bearings, are serious handicaps to their 
progress in the ordinary affairs of life and 
to their power to understand and sym- 
pathize with their fellow men. For in 
order to know human nature at its best 

21 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

and to feel our sympathies going out, not 
to a few selected persons, but to men in 
general, we must learn to know men at 
their weakest as well as at their strongest 
points, and to see that the difference be- 
tween success and failure is a difference 
of degree. Not only this, but the respects 
in which men are disguised from them- 
selves, through repression, act as so many 
"blind spots," 1 by virtue of which they 
become unable to see certain qualities in 
their neighbors. It is for this reason that 
many otherwise fine persons are so narrow 
in their appreciation of their fellow men. 

These two modes of approach, while 
apparently so different, have some strik- 
ing points of resemblance, both in method 
and in aim. 

The psycho-analytic mode of approach 
deals with men primarily on the basis of 
their concrete experiences since birth, the 

1 1 refer to the so-called "blind spot" of the retina, the pres- 
ence of which is not recognized until some device is used for making 
it apparent. 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

record of which their memories are urged 
and aided to complete, and usually do 
complete to an extent not previously con- 
templated as possible. It is the concrete 
individual that is studied; but through 
the accumulated knowledge of many indi- 
viduals we learn to comprehend many 
slight hints which each one's memory can 
furnish. The philosophic or rational mode 
of approach, on the other hand, is based 
on the observation that no logically-minded 
person (and that means, in effect, no per- 
son) finds it possible to think any particular 
thought without realizing, on reflection, 
that this implies entertaining other 
thoughts without which the first would 
be incomplete. 

He must, for example, recognize, as a 
basis for every thought worth naming, 
the fact that he is himself a living, self- 
consistent person ; and also that other 
persons exist with whom he can communi- 
cate and to whom he is bound by certain 

23 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

ties. A person may become so accus- 
tomed to neglecting these presuppositions 
and necessary inferences of his thought 
that he would acknowledge no recognition 
of them at all. But if he is led to look at 
himself intelligently, and encouraged to 
break down the resistances which he may 
be inclined to oppose, the evidence for 
the validity of certain inferences becomes so 
strong that it can scarcely be disregarded. 
By virtue of this reasoning, he finds him- 
self forced to recognize layer upon layer 
of thought that make him look at the 
object of his primary inquiry in a wider 
and wider form. He finds, first, that all 
things are related; and, later, that this 
relationship should not be defined in any 
way that would make it inconsistent with 
the action of his own mind. From the 
fixed relationships between things of the 
sort contemplated by science, he moves 
on to the conception of "self -relation" — 
that is, to a relation characterized by a 

24 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

self-consistency existing in spite of change, 
such as every one finds in his own obser- 
vation of himself. 

Somewhat the same statement may be 
made of the concrete discoveries concerning 
experience which are brought out by the 
psycho-analytic mode of approach. There, 
too, persons unused to the employment of 
this method at first declare that the memory 
of their experiences is limited by bounds 
which they find it impossible to overstep. 
But here, again, it is found that the diffi- 
culty is by no means one of memory alone. 
The main trouble is that each of us is 
hemmed in by habits and prejudices which 
have grown to be so firmly organized that 
it is hard to overcome them. One might 
call them unseen walls, or better designate 
them as an invisible net woven of cords as 
strong as steel. These walls, this net, must 
be rendered visible and must be broken 
through before further progress is possible. 

Thus, while the two modes of approach 
25 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

differ strikingly in appearance (the first 
of them being based on the recovery of 
concrete memories, one by one, through 
processes of association and by the aid of 
hints derived from the analysis of dreams, 
the other depending on the conscious recog- 
nition, one after another, of a series of log- 
ical inferences and deductions), yet in fact 
the resemblances between them are equally 
striking and equally important. In using 
either mode, real, emotional resistances, of 
the nature of fixed prejudices, have to be 
broken down ; and further analysis would 
show that in both cases these resistances 
are analogous in origin and nature. At 
any rate the task of overcoming them is 
so difficult that one is reminded, in dealing 
with them, of the story of the god Thor, 
to whom the task was assigned of emptying 
an innocent-seeming horn of wine, on the 
contents of which, after taking deep 
draughts, he was chagrined to find that he 
had made but slight impression. Later, it 

26 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

was mockingly explained to him that the 
horn was magically connected with the 
sea. Another more homely but equally 
good illustration of the same point is that 
told by Emerson with regard to the weed- 
ing of a garden. The would-be gardener 
thinks, at first, that he has an easy task 
before him, but each weed pulled up reveals 
many more that he behind. So it is with 
people's resistance to the recognition of 
their own memories or the logical inferences 
from their thoughts. We think our knowl- 
edge of ourselves is reasonably accurate 
and are sure that if the opportunity were 
offered we should be willing and glad to 
enlarge its boundaries. But when the op- 
portunity really does offer, — that is, 
the moment we find ourselves beginning 
to see our own characters and tempera- 
ments, or even our present body of knowl- 
edge, in a new light, especially if in this 
process we come up against something 
which demands the breaking down of a 

27 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

prejudice, — at that moment we look about 
instinctively to find reasons for calling off 
the dogs, lest they really find the quarry. 
If we could be absolutely sure what the 
nature of the quarry was, perhaps the search 
for it would be continued. But to know 
this would be to have a knowledge which 
would make the search itself unnecessary. 
We must, then, go on, slowly, perhaps pain- 
fully, step by step; or else we must aid 
ourselves by constructing, with the help 
of imagination, a notion of the goal. 

Some new meaning or motive always lies 
behind the meanings and motives which 
the person under investigation thrusts for- 
ward as those by which his thoughts and 
conduct are inspired. Any one familiar 
with the Socratic method of inquiry, as 
illustrated, for example, in the "Republic" 
of Plato, will appreciate the significance of 
this statement. The inquiries conducted 
by the great analyzer proceeded on both 
these lines, and the person under interro- 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

gation was made to bring out motive after 
motive, inference behind inference, until he 
arrived at the real basis of his thought. 

Not only is this true, but it is true also 
that between the concrete experiences and 
the logical inferences themselves, if one 
looks closely at the matter, the differ- 
ence is not so great as at first sight ap- 
pears. It is always possible to substitute 
the creative energy of a thing or a sit- 
uation for the concrete thing itself. This 
cannot be denied. We must deal with 
concrete situations. We must deal also 
with their causes. If facts are stubborn 
things, the creative energies that lie behind 
them are still more stubborn. If elec- 
tricity makes the lamp glow, and if it is 
the light thus given that we wish to under- 
stand, then it is the light that we must 
study. But no student should be blinded 
by this fact to the still greater fact of the 
unseen current that flows silently through 
the dark and hidden wire. In the light of 

29 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

the underlying tendency, even dull and 
obscure facts gain a new richness and mean- 
ing. The student of psycho-analysis who 
has studied carefully the "association" 
method, especially with reference to the 
analysis of dreams, must have become 
aware that when we seem to study experi- 
ences and actual memories, it is really the 
tendencies, the traits (especially of child- 
hood) which lie behind these memories and 
behind the grotesquenesses and picturesque 
fagades of dreams that are the real objects 
of our search. These traits contain, as 
elements, emotional longings which the 
censorship of social conscience forbids us 
openly to entertain. 

In spite of the determined search for the 
concrete, even the most scientific and em- 
pirical of observers finds it unavoidable, 
from time to time, to speak of the energy 
which feeds our lives and makes possible 
our instinctive as well as our purposive 
acts and motives, as a "reservoir" of 

30 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

force, a "stream," a "current," and so on. 
To do this, however, is to recognize that 
an act is what it is because it is the expres- 
sion of a creative energy, and my conten- 
tion is that this element of creative energy 
is the real object to which our attention 
should mainly be devoted. Unless we 
learn to appreciate this causal energy and 
to find its analogue in ourselves, the con- 
templation of the act is vain. 

To use one more simile, suggested by a 
friend, we may lie on the grass and watch 
with infinite enjoyment a soft cloud resting 
quietly upon the mountain top, the type 
and emblem of repose. But if we climb 
the mountain and visit the cloud itself, we 
may find that a strong wind is rushing 
through it, constantly bringing moisture 
which is quickly deposited and again as 
quickly taken up. To discover this aspect 
of the cloud's life is to learn a lesson 
that might aid one to appreciate the fact 
that human beings and human motives, 

31 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

significant though they may be regarded 
in and for themselves, are far more sig- 
nificant when regarded as the expression of 
something greater than themselves. These 
are considerations to which the genetic 
method, devoted as it is to the study of the 
panoramic details of our unfolding lives 
and debarred from the study of deeper- 
lying causes, cannot possibly do justice. 
But, in fact, the genetic method leads 
straight and of necessity to the philosophic 
method. 

I have undertaken in this chapter to 
show that our motives are derived from 
two main sources. In everything that we 
do we obey, on the one hand, an impulse 
stronger than most people are aware of, 
which, if taken by itself, would make us 
entertain motives and perform acts corre- 
sponding to our best possible ideals and 
implying the activity of a power greater 
than ourselves. Obedience to this power 
does not deprive us of our independence, 



MAIN SOURCES OF MOTIVES 

but helps us to act in conformity with the 
scheme of the universe taken as a whole. 

But this tendency never works alone. 
The fact that we have an evolutional his- 
tory, and stand as the representative of a 
creative energy that expressed itself, first in 
far simpler forms of life and finally in the 
form of human instincts, and the additional 
fact that we are designed to live in social 
groups, brings it about that we have strong 
personal desires, which form an obvious 
source of motives making themselves felt 
throughout our lives and often coming into 
conflict with the motives of the other order. 

After describing these two sources of 
motives I called attention to two modes of 
approach to the study of human life as 
exemplified in intentions and in acts. 

Finally I pointed out that these two 
modes of approach — which were desig- 
nated as philosophical and religious, on the 
one hand, and genetic or psycho-analytic, 
on the other — although they seem to 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

differ widely, really resemble each other at 
many points ; and that this resemblance 
is seen to be greater when instead of giving 
our attention only to concrete experiences, 
or to forces treated as concrete elements, 
as the student of natural science neces- 
sarily treats them, we substitute for them, 
in our thought, the creative energy of 
which they are the expression. 



34 



Chapter II 
The Rational Basis of Religion 

" The rounded world is fair to see, 
Nine times folded in mystery : 
Though baffled seers cannot impart 
The secret of its laboring heart, 
Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast 
And all is clear from east to west. 
Spirit that lurks each form within 
Beckons to spirit of its kin ; 
Self -kindled every atom glows, 
And hints the future which it owes." 

IN the previous chapter I have shown 
reason for adducing a religious stand- 
ard of motives as the one to be relied 
upon for furnishing the main goal of prog- 
ress, and I now wish to offer further reasons, 
of a more philosophical sort, for doing this. 
It is neither in a doctrinal nor an unduly 
mystical sense that I undertake the advo- 
cacy of religion, but because I wish to ac- 

35 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

knowledge the supremacy of this influence 
in our lives. I am well aware that the 
church, with all that it implies, is a place 
where reason and rational emotion find 
themselves side by side with passion and 
superstition. If, however, — or in so far as, 
— religion is the expression of the truth, it 
expresses the most important aspect of the 
truth ; and to support it strenuously in its 
best form is an essential preliminary to the 
elimination of its abuses. 

To some people the religious feeling 
comes without effort and gives a joy and 
sense of dignity to daily life. But there 
are others who can only believe what they 
can classify in accordance with the kind 
of evidence that they are in the habit of 
employing, and who therefore set aside 
the claims of religion altogether, as founded 
on sentiment alone. Even at the best, 
they feel, the religious standard could be 
of no especial value except as fostering 
good conduct and loyalty of purpose. 

36 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

And since, by virtue of their intelligence, 
they have tacitly accepted these standards 
of conduct as binding, they see nothing to 
be gained through the assertion of rela- 
tions of obligation toward an invisible and 
illimitable being, and through the observ- 
ance of ceremonials which they cannot 
justify without compromising their honesty 
and their reason. The religious attitude, 
they think, is only the expression of a sen- 
timent founded in a longing for excitement 
and compensation, and the claim for an 
"absolute" anything at all is philosoph- 
ically untenable and practically unneces- 
sary. This attitude is well defined, in part, 
in the following sentiment expressed a few 
years ago by an eminent English writer on 
philosophy : 

"We do not need to know what is abso- 
lutely good in order to know that one thing 
is better than another. We do not need to 
know the elixir of life in order to know that 
beef is more nourishing than straw, and 
water healthier than absinthe. We do not 

37 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

need to be assured of immortality in order 
to judge that a life is worth living. We do 
not need to know absolute truth in order to 
detect a lie. The fact is that our ideals are 
not actually prior to the particular experi- 
ences they profess to 'explain,' but are built 
up out of suggestions derived from the 
latter." 

If these various propositions were ration- 
ally tenable, and if when conscientiously 
adhered to they could be made to furnish 
a satisfactory basis of social morals, they 
ought to be accepted. But if they do 
not seem of this character, we ought to 
come forward with our objections, were 
it only for the sake of the many persons 
who are still in doubt and to whom our 
particular line of reasoning might appeal. 
It is certain that moral crises often come 
when both decision and conduct need the 
best prop and spur that can be given them, 
and the sense of obligation that goes with 
adherence to a big cause is surely greater 
than that which a little cause can set in 

38 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

action. In this sense, if in no other, we 
do need to know what is "absolutely good" 
in order to know that one thing is better 
than another. Unless we prepare ourselves 
for the coming of such crises, we are sure 
to find ourselves, like the foolish virgins, 
with our lamps unfilled and with our minds 
unfurnished with the knowledge of what 
source to turn to for the needful oil. 

It is asserted that men find in the grati- 
fication of personal desires and in the defense 
of their own firesides motives of greater 
strength than any feeling of obligation 
toward an invisible ideal can supply. 
But this is a mistake. The social whole 
and its representative spirit are the real 
centre of every man's devotion. 

My own reasons for giving my alle- 
giance to the religious standard and for 
endorsing the observance of suitable reli- 
gious ceremonials are as follows : 

It is true that ceremonials can serve the 
ends of superstition, and this should be 

39 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

made known. But even superstition may 
carry the germs of something better. We 
keep birthdays and make much of the an- 
niversaries of the birth or death of great 
men without feeling that our own sense of 
dignity suffers impairment thereby. Fur- 
thermore, the recognition of such feelings of 
affection and respect shows that we 
acknowledge something within us that is 
a little better than what we are able under 
ordinary conditions to put immediately 
into practice. 

The situation as regards religion seems 
to me to be of the same sort with this. 
We all strive to show reason, love, and will 
in the conduct of our affairs and in our 
dealings with one another. We realize, 
also, that neither reason, love, nor will can 
exist or be used alone, and that it is only 
for the convenience of our speech that we 
reason as if this possibility existed. The 
nearer we come to the point of acting or 
thinking in such a way that our intelli- 

40 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

gence, our disinterested love, and our voli- 
tion coalesce and are seen to reinforce one 
another, the more truly do we conceive 
ourselves to be acting in accordance with 
what we call our best. And we feel justi- 
fied in asserting that the acts done under 
these conditions are constructive in a 
deeper and wider sense than those done 
under conditions when reason, love, or 
will seem to act independently. After pass- 
ing on, in this way, along a well-defined 
line of progress, from less perfected to 
more perfected persons, have we the right 
to call a halt to our aspiring reason ; and at 
what point ? Must we not perforce con- 
clude that a being exists of whom it is true 
that this interpenetration of reason, love, 
and will is absolute and invariable, and if 
we find reason to believe that we stand in 
a close relationship to this being, then have 
we not the duty and the right to show 
our recognition of the relationship by ap- 
propriate ceremonies? These ceremonies 

41 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

must not, however, be allowed to become 
the masters of our thoughts and feelings; 
nor should we fail to determine, through 
scrutiny, just what these thoughts and feel- 
ings are. 

If the universe has a personality of 
which we can assert, at least, that it can- 
not be incompatible with our own and that 
it lends dignity to our own, and if we be- 
lieve this personality to be under an in- 
herent obligation to make itself prevail at 
its best, just as each finite person is glad to 
give the best expression to his personality, 
then we should recognize the same sort 
of obligation to work in harmony with the 
universe-personality that we feel with refer- 
ence to the endorsement of our own sense 
of loyalty, rationality, and constructiveness. 

In asking whether the universe is per- 
sonal we ought to begin by admitting that 
one portion of it surely is, — namely, our- 
selves. We cannot use our reason to 
affirm our doubts and at the same time 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

deny our reason. We cannot assert our 
own power of disinterested love and will 
and at the same time deny that love and 
will exist. Finally, since it is impossible 
that a thing which has a certain perfectness 
should have come into existence except as 
the expression, or through the influence, of 
a preexisting something that was at least 
equally perfect, then the degree of per- 
fection found by us in ourselves and attrib- 
uted by us, as a necessity of our thought, 
to mankind at large, must have been for- 
ever in existence as a fundamental element, 
or condition, of the universal life of which 
our own is an integral part. The sym- 
phony cannot create the composer; its 
existence presupposes him. 

I was much impressed recently to hear 
a distinguished and clear-thinking pro- 
fessor of philosophy, whose attitude with 
regard to "realism" had made me expect a 
different opinion on this point, assert that 
if God exists, it must be as an influence or 

43 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

energy permeating the universe as an 
essential feature of it and as present in 
every detail and part of it, and that in 
fact he believed this to be the case. This 
is my own opinion. 

The fact is that if one is willing to see 
that any and every investigation must 
start with the acceptance, on the part of 
the man who makes it, of himself, at his 
best, as affirming a condition which the 
finished investigation must ratify and to 
which it must conform, much discussion 
would be spared. 

Here we are, with our own duties and 
our own powers, and compelled to recog- 
nize the existence of other men, of like 
sort, at the cost of denying, if we refuse 
to do so, the very condition that we began 
by assuming as essential. 

But the allegiance which we admit as 
due to ourselves as partially rational, 
partially disinterested beings, capable, in 
spite of our limitations, of conceiving of 

44 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

persons and a world not thus limited; 
this same allegiance we owe, in redoubled 
measure, to the Being whom we thus 
conceive, and whose existence, in conceiv- 
ing of it, we affirm. In any investigation 
into the secrets of life, the inquirer is sure 
to find what he brings, — no less, no more. 
The whole man must give and find him- 
self. While striving to find himself, he 
may, at first, look at the world naively, as 
a world of separate and individual things; 
then, in accordance with scientific teach- 
ing, as a world of fixed forces and relations. 
But here one cannot stop. Fixed relations 
have no standing in a world of real change, 
except as forms of speech, — that is, except 
as pointing to the self-relationships of per- 
sonal life. Eventually one must assume 
these self-relationships of spontaneous per- 
sonal life to be characteristic of the uni- 
verse as a whole, even the world of nature 
conceived of as existing in relation to 
persons. 

45 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

I respect the agnostic attitude of scien- 
tific men and believe it to be the expression 
of a genuine honesty. But when it is too 
tenaciously adhered to, and the arguments 
that to me appeal so strongly fail to con- 
vince, I feel the right to think that this 
attitude is quite as much in need of expla- 
nation and defense as the attitude of the 
believer. Many persons find it extremely 
difficult to gain a practical sense of obliga- 
tion, — as resting on them by virtue of an 
origin and destiny of the sort here assumed, 
— to recognize in their belief the basis of a 
real source of motives. This is largely be- 
cause they consider it impossible to estab- 
lish either their origin or their destiny, in an 
idealistic sense, or think that at best these 
cannot be defined except in terms of the 
most shadowy description. Yet such per- 
sons are often to be seen sacrificing them- 
selves for a feeling of obligation which it 
would be impossible to defend in scientific 
terms. Many of them would be able to 

46 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

endorse in practice the fine lines that stand 
over the gateway to Soldiers' Field at 
Harvard University : 

"Though love repine, and reason chafe, 
There came a voice without reply, — 
' 'Tis man's perdition to be safe 
When for the truth he ought to die.'" 

But to do this, to re-bind oneself in this 
fashion, is to accept and assert one of the 
essential conditions of religion. 

If we go further and express the idea in 
a form at once more personal and more 
universal, we must take God, or His equiva- 
lent, as the object of our devotion . This 
should not be considered as amounting to 
the postulation of some cold and infinitely 
remote idea. We use these terms — 
"God" and "the universe" — to express 
something which we feel to be in us, yet 
which transcends us and the other persons 
to whom we might feel that our loyalty 
was due. To do this is equivalent to the 

47 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

assertion, in its final form, of the obliga- 
tion which every man is under to maintain 
the dignity of mankind at its best. 

A difficulty in the way of adopting this 
religious ideal as a standard of obligation 
is that the terms "universe" and "God," 
besides being shadowy, have connotations 
that to many people are positively 
obnoxious. They suggest sentimentality 
and emotional excess. It is for reasons 
such as this that men's attitude toward 
religion is at present in a peculiar state. 
One observer after another has declared, 
on the basis of positive evidence, that two 
tendencies of opposite sorts are now ap- 
parent, side by side. On the one hand 
men are leaving the established churches, 
while on the other the religious sentiment 
as such, accompanied with the desire for 
opportunities of union on some religious 
basis, is distinctly on the increase. Some 
established forms, however, we must have, 
just as the soul must have a body, and it 

48 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

would be possible to infuse new life into 
the old forms if all were agreed on the 
essential points at stake. 

Finally, the sense- world, with which 
our passions, our efforts, our fears, and our 
experiences are all bound up, has such a 
hold upon the mind that to be asked to 
believe in any world from which time and 
space have been excluded arouses at first a 
sense of resistance hard to overcome and a 
feeling of distress difficult to endure. The 
memories which we owe to the sense of 
touch and the senses of sight and hearing 
have such a value for us that they almost 
constrain us to reject all other modes of 
getting at our facts. When we are asked, 
therefore, to accept an unpicturable world, 
it is inevitable that in making the attempt 
to do so we should crane our necks as if 
with the secret hope that we might after 
all make it visible, forgetting that in the 
world of dreams and fancies we divorce 
ourselves from our senses altogether, and 

49 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

yet see and feel and hear, and also that 
language is capable of making evident to 
us, mentally, relations which no sense can 
ratify. 

To learn to make the unpicturable world 
real is to make our way toward a light 
which constantly grows brighter; and as 
we near its source we learn to reject, for 
good and all, the idea that to discuss matters 
of this sort is to study something that a 
man might almost pride himself on being 
ignorant of, or certainly might be content 
to remain ignorant of without acknowl- 
edging any serious gap in his education. 
Attitudes of this sort I now look upon as 
mainly reactions of defense. 

What we most care for in the world are 
love, justice, honor, power, — all of which 
are unpicturable and are related to the 
various forms of energy without which 
nothing could exist. To gain a realizing 
sense that these forms of energy are just 
as real as any fact in nature is to make an 

50 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

advance well worth the working for. Such 
an advance cannot be gained without labor, 
for to feel the reality of a world of this 
sort, to learn to live in the midst of these 
unpicturable energies, requires practice just 
as truly as it requires practice to feel at 
home in any unfamiliar environment. Many 
have learned this lesson and have made 
their knowledge an influence of real sig- 
nificance in their lives; and among these 
I think especially of Helen Keller, who has 
described the progress of her own enlighten- 
ment in striking terms. Groping her way 
through her one channel, in her search for 
the fullness of the picturable world, she 
found, at last, and as if suddenly, that her 
mind, with its power of retaining its own 
self-consistency through its constantly and 
infinitely changing relationships, arrived at 
last at a point where her blindness and her 
deafness became almost banished. To- 
ward the end of the chapter in which she 
describes her progress she says : 

51 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

"Ancient philosophy offers an argument 
which seems still valid. There is in the 
blind as in the seeing an Absolute which 
gives truth to what we know to be true, 
order to what is orderly, beauty to the beau- 
tiful, touchableness to what is tangible. 
If this is granted it follows that this Abso- 
lute is not imperfect, incomplete, partial. 
It must needs go beyond the limited evi- 
dence of our sensations, and also give light 
to what is invisible, music to the musical 
that silence dulls. Thus mind itself com- 
pels us to acknowledge that we are in a 
world of intellectual order, beauty, and har- 
mony. . . . Thus deafness and blindness 
do not exist in the immaterial mind, which 
is philosophically the real world, but are 
banished with the material senses. Reality, 
of which visible things are the symbol, 
shines before my mind. While I walk about 
my chamber with unsteady steps, my spirit 
sweeps skyward on eagle wings and looks 
out with unquenchable vision upon the 
world of eternal beauty." 

Although we live and breathe and have 
our being in an unpicturable world, a 
world not of things but of values, the 
prejudice against studying the nature of 

52 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

this world still retains its force. It is often 
thought that no one could breathe, in any 
practical and practicable sense, the rare 
atmosphere of an unpicturable world, and 
that if Immanuel Kant said that time and 
space exist only in our minds, as a neces- 
sary condition for our thinking, he was 
talking a sort of nonsense which could 
be treated with neglect, if not contempt. 

Persons not in the habit of defining to 
themselves the conditions of existence of 
the unpicturable world of ideal values are 
apt to make errors of two sorts. They 
first clothe this world in forms, details, and 
colors which are taken from the life of 
evolution and experience and represent the 
projection of experience, and then, finding 
themselves unable to accept a world so 
pictured, they reject the arguments for 
its existence altogether. In order that 
these pitfalls may be avoided, it should be 
seen that what is claimed is the possession 
of something, itself undefinable in detail, 

53 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

which underlies all forms and makes ex- 
perience possible and intelligible. Even 
what we call the world of reality is to a 
great extent a vision, but the power to en- 
tertain such visions, unpicturable though 
they are, remains our best possession. 

Every thinking person knows that if 
matter is a condition, to a certain extent, 
of the existence and manifestation of force, 
nevertheless matter, as ordinarily con- 
ceived, is nothing without force, and that 
in fact there is a strong tendency, even on 
the part of physicists, to move toward 
conceptions of matter such as indicate a 
growing suspicion on their part that force 
can at least be conceived of, for purposes of 
study, as detached from these other mani- 
festations of themselves that are called 
matter. Wherever electricity and magnet- 
ism are found, for instance, one sees them 
always in a double form. Imponderable 
and unpicturable as they are, they are 
capable nevertheless of dividing themselves 

54 



THE KATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

into positive and negative "fluids," — that 
is, of acting upon themselves, with nothing 
else between. And when it comes to 
the introspection of our own thought the 
same thing happens on a larger scale. It is 
not with our bodily eyes that we see our 
thoughts, and yet we do observe them. 

In addition to the reasons already urged 
for hostility to metaphysical ideas, the 
common argument should be mentioned 
that mind cannot be fundamental in the 
world, because if we go back to the time 
when no organic life existed on our planet 
there is no evidence that mind existed 
either. By this argument, mind seems to 
be ruled out of the universe altogether. 
It is forgotten, however, that no one would 
admit for a moment that the absence of 
organic life, in the ordinary acceptation of 
the word, meant the banishment of the 
laws of physics. 

But what are the laws of physics? Are 
they something that can have a real and 

55 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

permanent and spontaneous existence con- 
joined with the capacity for creating out of 
themselves the minds of living beings? 
Or are they formulas of measurement 
adopted by men for particular acts, with 
the accomplishment of particular results 
in view, just as they use foot-rules as a 
convenient but entirely arbitrary mode of 
measurement? No one can sit long, 
to-day, among a group of scientific men 
freely talking together, without hearing 
astounding admissions from them as to 
occurrences that seem to show, when the 
matter is looked into closely, that the phys- 
ical laws are only approximations to the 
truth. 

The fact is that when inquiring as to 
the relative validity of physical laws and 
mental laws, it is with ourselves that we 
are under obligation to begin and ourselves 
that we must take into account at every 
stage of the proceedings, as furnishing at 
once the powers that work and the tools 

56 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

through which they work. In short, 
physics can come to its rights only through 
metaphysics. The world of absolute, iron- 
chain relativity must be recognized as 
only a symbolic expression for a world of 
self -relativity — that is, a world of free 
thought, uniform in proportion to the degree 
of perfection to be found in the motives and 
the reason that work through it. "Das 
Vergangliche ist nur ein Gleichniss." 

To shield ourselves behind an unwill- 
ingness to be thought of as giving alle- 
giance to symbolic statements as if they 
were scientific definitions, is a sort of self- 
defense, indicative of a suspicion that 
some truth really lurks behind these state- 
ments in the form of a god to be loved, 
or a devil to be feared, — with neither of 
which can we bring ourselves face to face 
with anything like the ease with which we 
can face an experiment in chemistry or 
physics. 

Professor Royce defines God as "the 
57 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

totality of the expressions and life of the 
world-will, when considered in its con- 
scious unity." This definition will be 
better understood if it is translated into 
terms of our own experience. To speak of 
any being as "consciously unified" is to 
say that he is conscious of himself as re- 
maining virtually the same person from 
one day to the next, although in reality we 
must admit that neither in a physical nor 
a mental sense is it possible for a person to 
remain the same even from one moment 
to the next. The sense of unity — that is, 
of self -consistency — through this change 
means something more than that to a 
considerable extent the two circles which 
we might regard as standing, the one for the 
individual of to-day, the other for the indi- 
vidual of yesterday or to-morrow, could 
be thought of as overlapping. It is even 
doubtful whether in any proper sense such 
an overlapping could be postulated at all. 
But the real point is that a self-consciously 

58 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

unified person is one who not only can 
but must express himself in constantly new 
forms and thus show himself to be a per- 
son of many sides or many possibilities. 
This kind of unity, or individuality, which 
is best defined in the expression that a per- 
son is never so much himself as when he is 
giving himself wholly to some cause outside 
himself, is a unity not definable in terms of 
physical laws, but characteristic of spon- 
taneous life. To say that God is the 
totality of the expressions of the world-will 
is again to say nothing more than what can 
justly be affirmed of every man. No other 
definition of a personality is possible, for 
nothing lives except as it acts, and the acts 
that we have done and that contribute to 
make us what we are, still live. To say 
that God creates man and the world and 
is immanent in the acts and thoughts of 
men is also entirely explicable, if thought 
of from the light of our own experience. 
Do we not make our own thoughts and 

59 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

acts, and are we not immanent in them? 
Do we not also, at each moment, make 
our bodies, when we bend them to our 
wills and set up mechanisms which there- 
after will do what was once the immediate 
expression of our bidding ? 

We cannot think either of ourselves or 
of the world as partly living (that is, partly 
animated by a spontaneous life) and partly 
dead, although we must be prepared to see 
constantly appearances that might be taken 
as giving rise to this idea, — just as, again, 
in the case of the rising and setting of the 
sun, we seem to see that luminary going 
up and down. The particles of our skin 
and its appendages seem, indeed, to dry 
up and disappear. But here comes the 
law of the conservation of energy to our 
aid. These particles take the same place 
that the leaves take that fall from the 
forest trees. Sooner or later they become 
converted into soil, and new leaves come 
again; that is, they never get far away 

60 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

from a state in which they are virtually 
portions of the spontaneous life and energy 
of the world. And so our own bodies are 
in close relation to our personal lives, and 
the laws of physics to the laws of the mind. 
Motion would soon cease and would never 
have begun unless beyond the bodies 
moved there had been some source of energy 
that was self-renewing. To this energy, in 
its simplest form, the name of "purus 
actus," pure activity, or self -activity, is 
given ; and it needs but little change in point 
of view to recognize the practical identity 
of this principle with the "poussee vitale" 
and "elan vitale" of Bergson, with which 
every one is now familiar, with the "vital 
impulse" accepted as essential by some 
biologists, and with the energy assumed 
by psycho-analytic writers to be resident 
in- our instincts. 

Everything which is real is self-active, 
and nothing except that which is real in 
this sense exists for us at all, unless as an 

61 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

abstraction of the imagination. To this 
self-activity must be accorded the same 
power of acting on itself with which the 
study of electricity and magnetism has 
made us all familiar. But it should be 
clearly recognized that these two ways in 
which self -activity expresses itself, although 
near enough alike to permit the use of the 
more familiar as a guide to the understand- 
ing of the less familiar, are by no means 
identical. Self-activity, in its simplest 
manifestation — that is, as constituting 
the life of nature — is to be thought of as 
like a sequence of tones (discords, it may 
be) which if taken by themselves are of no 
value but which may be conceived of as 
infused with the meaning of the whole 
musical composition of which they are a 
part. Or, again, such simpler manifesta- 
tions might be compared to the first out- 
line drawn by a great master and intended 
to foreshadow his finished composition ; or 
to the self -active proposition of the logician, 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

which brings out through its spontaneous 
life hidden possibilities of meaning and of 
power. 

So, first expressing itself through phys- 
ical laws, then through such forms of 
activity as are characteristic in the se- 
quences of the vegetable world and the 
animal world, a point is reached of which 
Emerson speaks when he says : 

"And well the primal pioneer 
Knew the strong task to it assigned, 
Patient through Heaven's enormous year 
To build in matter home for mind." 

More and more, as time goes on, it is 
seen that the evidences of apparent deter- 
minism in the world, numerous as they are, 
tend to disappear. The history of man- 
kind and the history of the individual alike 
are histories, on the whole, of the growth 
of freedom. The stream is often inter- 
rupted, often seems to take a backward 
course ; but its main flow is onward ; 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

"For He that worketh high and wise, 
Nor pauses in his plan, 
Will take the sun out of the skies 
Ere freedom out of man." 

The universe is a self-consistent whole, 
rational and free, ever and eternally chang- 
ing in detail yet without losing its con- 
sistency with itself. By the same right, 
we continue from week to week and from 
year to year to call ourselves by the same 
name, to feel ourselves responsible for the 
acts that as other persons we once did and 
as other persons we shall do. Each frag- 
ment of the universe is living, and by the 
law in accordance with which life is self- 
division and creation and every element of 
that which creates passes into the created, 
every particle of the universe has a measure 
of freedom — that is, of choice. Of this 
power of choice, evidence is to be seen 
even in the lowest forms of organisms 
known to men. But freedom cannot exist 
without conflict and clash, and through 

64 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 

these it must win a uniformity in which 
order is again found, — this time, how- 
ever, not dependent upon an iron-chain 
necessity but existing as an evidence of 
perfect intelligence coalescing with per- 
fectly disinterested love and perfect will. 

The reasoning through which I have here sought to show our 
obligation to assert a universe of completeness transcending and 
supplementing our world of incompleteness, is of a kind on which 
we all constantly rely yet without realizing the extent to which 
we do so or the full bearing of the principle involved. Every one 
will admit, upon reflection, that we reach our conclusions partly 
through the unconscious recognition of inferences and contrasts 
that we do not name. One cannot affirm that a given object is 
light in color without tacitly assuming that it might have been 
dark, and so on. It is less obvious yet more important that one 
cannot say "I perceive" without tacitly assuming a self-conscious, 
self -consistent, relatively continuous "I." In some respects these 
tacit assumptions are the more vital portions of the process in 
question. Thus, the best service rendered by a perception is 
often that it points to a conception, and the best service rendered 
by a conception of a given sort is that it points to a further con- 
ception of a more comprehensive kind. Through observing 
physical phenomena and discovering how rigidly dependent they 
seem to be, one upon another, one is led to see that no such rigid 
law of relativity obtains among mental phenomena and learns 
thus to recognize that thought is self-related and that, in this 
sense, our mental life takes its place beside the processes charac- 
terized as "infinite." This principle, whereby the finite is used 
to prove the infinite, the logical to prove something beyond logic, 
derived activity to prove spontaneous activity, has been relied 
upon by great thinkers since the days of Plato, and in our day 

65 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

and generation especially by such men as Doctor W. T. Harris, 
Professor Royce, Professor Bowne, and others of like standing. 
Its importance has recently been pointed out afresh by Doctor 
C. J. Keyser, Professor of Mathematics in Columbia University, 
in his address entitled "Science and Religion, the Rational and 
the Superrational." 

In this striking and inspiring paper Doctor Keyser points out 
that our human faculties enable us to follow sequences of any and 
every sort up to an indeterminate and ever-receding point. Be- 
yond every point to which our finite intelligence leads us, we find 
ourselves obliged to infer the existence of something which tran- 
scends our power of logical definition. Through necessary in- 
ferences of this sort we are compelled to get beyond the picturable 
to the unpicturable world, beyond time and space to a real infinite, 
and beyond the mental operations of logical sort to a mental life 
transcending logic. The interesting address closes with the state- 
ment that "in every category where the laws of reason reign we 
find that the great process of Idealization points aloft to some 
form above the laws : we find that — like the Class of all Classes, 
like the Joint Affirmation of all Propositions, like the Logical Sum 
of all Relations, like Omniscience, like Beauty absolute — so, 
too, Eternality, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Necessity or Fate, 
Unconditioned Freedom or Self-determination, Perfect Justice, 
Universal Harmony, the Goodness of God, Felicity Divine, and 
many other supreme ideals and supreme perfections of rational 
experience and thought, are all of them forms of Being absolute, 
constituting an Overworld, a realm Superrational. 

******* 

"To debate the 'existence' of such a world were a vain dis- 
pute. In some sense, whatsoever quickens, lures, and sustains, 
exists. Aspiration is not mocked. Reason's unattainable ideals 
are the light-giving ^Ether of Life. Therein is the precious and 
abiding reality of the Overworld," 



66 



Chapter III 

The Psycho- Analytic Movement 

"Of the storm of men's passions, the clash of 
their deeds 
I am the soul and the breath, 
The weaver of life's web : 
Birth and death, 
Flood and ebb ; 
The pattern grows ; 
Life flows and glows ; 
So at Time's roaring loom do my shuttles weave 
Men's lives as a garb for the God of Love." 

The Earth Spirit, "Faust," Part I. 

THIS chapter is intended to give a 
more systematic account than has 
thus far been attempted of the 
psycho-analytic movement, its aims, its 
accomplishments, and the significance for 
the study of human motives of the re- 
pressed tendencies with which it deals. 

The psycho-analytic movement may be 
defined as an attempt to make the facts 

67 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

and principles discovered through the 
analysis of individual lives of service in 
the study of race history and of life in 
general. The psycho-analytic method is the 
name given to the special means by which 
the memory is aided to penetrate into the 
forgotten portions of one's life, with the 
view of bringing to the light of clear con- 
sciousness the details of emotional con- 
flicts which, in spite of being out of sight, 
exert an influence, often of an unfavorable 
sort, on the development of character and 
temperament, as well as on the motives, 
the habits, and the thoughts. The memory 
accomplishes this by passing from one to 
another of a long series of events related 
to each other by ties of the most varied 
sorts, and in doing so, it makes use of the 
aid furnished by inferential thinking and 
utilizes the hints provided by vast treas- 
uries of accumulated knowledge. The aim 
is a practical one, and the question is how 
the person under investigation can best be 

68 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

helped to gain a deeper and more intelli- 
gent insight into his own life. Every 
thought, every emotion even, is partly 
rational, partly an expression of feeling, 
and partly a manifestation of will. If the 
element of reason is accentuated, the ele- 
ment of emotion must play a part more in 
harmony with reason. This is education 
and leads to a gain in mental stability and 
health. The data that are needed must 
be sought for at first by burrowing in the 
dark closet of one's mental life, somewhat 
as one digs for Indian relics in an old shell 
heap ; that is, by giving rein to one's 
memory and one's power of thought, and 
encouraging it to go on a voyage of dis- 
covery without reference to what may be 
discovered. When found, these "relics" 
prove to be anything but inert facts. On 
the contrary, they are very active agents, 
insistent on their rights and difficult to 
subdue. 

The starting points for such processes 
69 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

of search into the unconscious life, through 
association, are contributed by ideas that 
come into the patient's mind as if acci- 
dentally or that are furnished by dreams, 
which, unimportant though they may seem 
to be, are really found, when analyzed, 1 
to be based largely on fundamental experi- 
ences of early childhood. In similar 
fashion, conversations, word-association 
tests, indeed almost any material that the 
patient's random, non-selective thoughts 
may offer, can serve as points of depar- 
ture for these analyses. 

Having defined thus briefly what psycho- 
analysis aims primarily to do, I beg leave, 
before proceeding further, to indicate the 
position of this important movement when 
considered in relation to the other prin- 
cipal mode of approach to the study of 
human life and motives which has been 
mentioned in the preceding chapters. 

1 It is not the dream story, as one first tells it, that has this 
significance, but the deeper-lying memory complexes drawn out 
by association. 

70 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

Professor Sigmund Freud, who has been 
the real life and soul of this movement 
from the beginning, has stated and reiter- 
ated in clear terms that no generalizations 
should be drawn from the data which the 
method furnishes that are not fully justi- 
fied by the clinical observations. He has 
always asserted that he makes no claim 
to have discovered anything like the sole 
avenue to the explanation of human life 
and human conduct. He and his immedi- 
ate followers have felt themselves to be 
dealing merely with a well-defined scien- 
tific investigation, — the study, namely, of 
a certain portion of the unconscious life, 
that portion which is made up of emotions 
which are unwelcome (for social reasons) 
and therefore repressed, yet which are 
longed for as sources of enjoyment. They 
have carefully avoided, so far as this was 
practicable, the postulation of any definite 
theological or philosophical opinions. Psy- 
cho-analysts might reach what conclusions 

71 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

they wished on such points as these, or 
any points, though with the understanding 
that if they found themselves impelled 
to use methods or assert principles that 
were essentially incompatible with those 
on which Freud had based his definition 
of psycho-analysis, they should no longer 
designate their methods by that term. I 
do not consider that this applies to the atti- 
tude I take, because I accept Freud's defini- 
tion and merely assert that psycho -analytic 
doctrines, like all scientific doctrines, are 
valid only within certain definite limits. 

It is truly remarkable what a touchstone 
has been put into our hands through this 
significant movement, wherewith to dis- 
tinguish real motives from the apparent 
motives which overlie them, and, under- 
neath the faults and failings, the fears and 
obsessive habits of adult life, to trace the 
workings of the instinctive cravings of 
imaginative, pleasure-seeking, and pain- 
shunning infancy, dragging back the adult 

72 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

from the fulfilment of his higher destiny. 
The complete enumeration of the gains that 
have already been secured, of the paths 
of promise that have been opened to us, 
through these fruitful investigations and 
these applications of the biogenetic prin- 
ciple in the study of human personality, 
would be a recital of an imposing charac- 
ter. It is not only for medicine that these 
advances have been won. It has been 
clearly shown that the great pieces of im- 
aginative and creative literature of the 
world, especially the great world poems 
such as the tragedies and epics of Greece, 
the fairy stories and the myths which have 
stood so long the test of time, and so, too, 
the manifestations of wit and humor and 
the many other modes of naive expression 
in which the soul of man instinctively lays 
open its hidden motives, are all permeated 
by the same tendency that underlies the 
signs and symptoms of the hysterias, the 
phobias, and the compulsions. 

73 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

The first impulse to these investigations 
came from Doctor J. Breuer of Vienna, who 
had occasion, in 1881, to treat an intelli- 
gent young woman suffering from hysteria 
in a serious form, characterized by paralyses 
and contractions and disorders of speech, 
for which he tried in vain the usual means 
of cure. With him was associated, as 
student and assistant, Sigmund Freud. 
Doctor Breuer found that the facts offered 
by this patient in explanation of her ill- 
ness, although they were freely furnished 
and represented her entire history so far 
as her consciousness could give it, consti- 
tuted only a fraction of the story which in 
the end her memory succeeded in drawing 
from its depths. Under the influence of 
a special method of inquiry, the history 
was gradually recovered of many experi- 
ences which had apparently been forgotten 
and which proved to be of an emotional 
character, connected with personal long- 
ings that had not been gratified. In pro- 

74 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

portion as the barriers were thrown down 
that separated the hidden portion of the 
patient's past from that of which she had 
remained consciously aware, one and 
another of her distressing symptoms 
dropped away. 

No further investigations were under- 
taken for a number of years; but the 
facts observed had made a deep impres- 
sion upon Freud, and he meditated upon 
them during a period of ten years, a part 
of which time he spent as a student of 
Charcot in Paris. On his return to Vienna, 
he urged Breuer to take up the matter 
again, and to utilize the striking results 
obtained in this case as a basis for investi- 
gations upon a larger scale. After this, 
for a time, the two worked together, later 
Freud alone. In a recent review of these 
experiences and of the subsequent history 
of the psycho-analytic movement, Freud 
points out that Breuer, who was a much 
older man and a student of general medi- 

75 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

cine, withdrew from the enterprise (as the 
former believes) at a point when he became 
half consciously aware whither it was driving 
— or rather, that it was driving in a direc- 
tion in which he did not care to go further. 
Freud was then, and has remained, a 
man of keen insight, and of remarkable 
honesty and fearlessness. Special reasons 
of a personal character had led him to 
interest himself in the treatment of ner- 
vous disorders, and the study of medicine 
was the natural avenue to that field. 
Having once made his choice, he found him- 
self captured and engrossed by the interest 
of this new movement, which had impressed 
him from the outset as one of great impor- 
tance. He felt himself a pioneer in a new 
country, and under conscientious obligation 
to report, without hesitation, everything 
that he found there exactly as he found it. 
In no other way can any pioneer explorer 
fulfil his obligations toward mankind, whose 
unchosen representative he is. 

76 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

One of the first facts that forced itself 
gradually more and more upon his notice 
was that the childhood of patients with 
nervous symptoms is, in an unexpected 
degree and sense, the parent of their later 
years; and also that the symptoms which 
many of them present later form a sort of 
hieroglyphic language in which their earlier 
history is preserved. He learned to see 
that the accounts which his patients gave 
to explain the onset of their illnesses had 
by no means the significance which they 
purported to have. Most of these nervous 
disorders come on either in puberty, — 
that is, at the beginning of one of the great 
critical periods of life, — or at a time when 
the person concerned is subjected to some 
one or another of the inevitable strains of 
personal, domestic, or social responsibility. 
This is no more true, however, of nervous 
invalids than it is of persons living the 
ordinary life of citizens in the community. 
The long shadows of coming responsibility, 

77 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

which begin to make their appearance 
during adolescence, the necessity, virtual 
if not actual, of thinking of oneself as a 
husband, a wife, a parent, the acute or 
prolonged strains of increasing cares, grow- 
ing anxiety, coupled with the obligation 
to bear one's burdens to a great extent 
alone, — all these difficulties, present or 
to come, combine to accentuate any specific 
tendencies to weakness, of whatever sort. 
But over and above these causes, and as 
furnishing a virtual preparation for them, 
there are to be found, by careful searching, 
a series of predispositions, due partly to 
the accentuation, in infancy and child- 
hood, of particular traits and tendencies 
of temperament and character, or to the 
establishment of partial arrests of develop- 
ment at certain points along the line of 
rapidly changing infancy and childhood. 
Thus are laid down what might be called 
special lines of least resistance. 

From the individual himself all the 
78 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

details of this early history are hidden. 
What he feels and what he tries to ward 
off is a sense of distress which he often 
recognizes as a sense of estrangement 
from himself. 1 What he does not recognize 
is that in consequence of these temporary 
inhibitions to further progress that be- 
came established in infancy and early 
childhood, he became subject to special 
forms of temptation which were thereafter 
to be reckoned with. When prevented 
from pushing forward toward the best 
outcome, the stream of energy of which 
the individual is the expression occupies 
channels which would otherwise have been 
left unflooded. In like fashion the child 
who cannot enter into the life of his school 
companions finds some means of occupying 
his wits and hands, and thus opens doors 
for himself into modes of gratification and 

1 The sense of being in the grasp of some agency foreign to 
oneself, which accompanies this sense of estrangement, is the 
equivalent of the demonic "possession" of the ancients. 

79 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

excitement to which he will remain only 
too liable to return. 

In his attempt to secure for himself 
some measure of relief from these feelings 
of distress, the individual, now grown 
older, feels forced to explain them in some 
manner which is consonant with his pre- 
vious training and his theory of life, how- 
ever crude this theory may be. No per- 
son can live happily in a world that seems 
out of relation to his thought; and every 
man who feels himself surrounded by influ- 
ences that he cannot understand must per- 
force attempt to seek some sort of rational 
explanation, which may have reference 
only to a particular situation, or may in- 
volve, though perhaps without his knowl- 
edge, the framing of some unifying theory 
of the universe, — which under the cir- 
cumstances is likely to be imperfect. It 
is as a part of the attempt to secure such 
an explanation that the patient lays stress 
on this or that fatigue, this or that partic- 

80 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

ular illness or disease as the assumed cause 
of his distress, or concludes that the uni- 
verse is cruel or irrational or the com- 
munity hostile to his peace. 

It is needless to say that I have no inten- 
tion of minimizing the effect of the later 
occurrences and strains in which nervous 
illnesses (so potent, indirectly, as a source 
of motives) seem to start. I wish only 
to insist upon the fact that all the pecu- 
liarities of a man's character and tempera- 
ment, whether we call them normal or 
abnormal, desirable or undesirable, are 
partly due to the establishment in the 
earliest years of life of those lines of least 
resistance which in their turn imply tem- 
porary arrests of development at one or 
another special point. We are all familiar 
with the sayings, "The child is father of 
the man" and "Just as the twig is bent the 
tree's inclined." But what this means in 
terms of the exact bending of the twig, 
the exact characteristic of this or that 

81 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

especial phase of childhood, it is now more 
possible to state. The later events of life, 
in other words, owe a large portion of their 
power for harm to the fact that they repro- 
duce, in new shape, old emotional excesses 
and limitations, of childish form and child- 
ish substance. Children love fairy stories 
and love to invent them for themselves; 
and they often go on, — still as children, 
more mature in years but still immature 
in fact, — telling themselves fairy stories to 
the end of time. 

Perhaps through the accompanying set 
of figures it will be possible to gain a better 
grasp of this idea. Let us suppose that 
D represents (by its wholly arbitrarily 
chosen shape) one or another of these later 
experiences which is the apparent cause 
of some undesirable peculiarity of character. 
Such assumed causes are illness of some 
sort, losing one's possessions, the death of 
a relative or friend, and so on. 

Let me say again that I do not deny that 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

events like these, whose number is infinite, 
may in this or that particular case exert 
a considerable share of the influence that 
has been ascribed to them. All that I 
would affirm is that in everybody's his- 
tory the effect of these later occurrences is 
immensely accentuated if earlier experi- 
ences of an emotional sort have occurred 
in infancy and early childhood, strong 
enough to give a " set " to the patient's 
traits, and with a sufficiently accurate 
resemblance to the later experiences to 
have enabled the patient's instinct to utilize 
the latter as means of vaguely recalling 
the former. 

In the case suggested by the diagram, 
the figures A, B, C, and D, although by no 
means alike, resemble one another in several 
respects. "Birds of a feather flock to- 
gether" in the mental as in the physical 
world ; and if the experience A, which we 
assume to have been one occurring during 
the plastic period of infancy, trivial though 

83 




HUMAN MOTIVES 

it would perhaps have seemed in the eyes 
of the adult, was able to make a powerful 
emotional impression at that 
time, it will seek to reproduce 
itself later through B and C 
and D 9 and through a thou- 
sand more such B's and C's 
and D's. This tendency will 
also be a much stronger one 
if the emotional experience A 
was wholly, or in part, re- 
pressed at the time of its oc- 
currence, or soon after. For 
B/ these repressed experiences 
have a marvellous ability to 
resist the influence of time. 
The only part of all this pro- 
cess of which the patient re- 
l i ? tains conscious awareness may 
be a sense of nameless distress, 
corresponding to the conflict between two 
sets of desires which he had felt. It is this 
nameless distress that forces him to adopt 

84 



Y 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

some seemingly rational explanation, — the 
illness, etc., — which, however, in view of 
the repression that has occurred, cannot be 
the real explanation. The distress, even, 
may be absent. The thoroughly egoistic 
patient, for example, often feels his egoistic 
cut de sac to be a paradise. And yet it is 
the fool's paradise par excellence in the 
eyes of most onlookers. 

One point of essential interest in the 
developments to which the study of the 
famous first case of Breuer and Freud — 
and of the tens and hundreds of others 
which came after it — soon gave rise was 
that emotions of a very personal nature, 
implying personal tensions of an emotional 
character, came more and more definitely 
to the front, and that when these were 
scrutinized, they were found to pass with- 
out a break into that great storehouse of 
intense feeling that one designates as "sex- 
ual." As the result of studying these 
developments, Freud found himself obliged 

85 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

to conclude that only those persons suf- 
fer from these nervous disorders whose sex- 
emotions (the word being taken in a sense 
presently to be defined) are in some way 
disturbed. This statement was at first 
one of concomitance rather than of cause. 
But the causal significance of it became, 
as time went on, forced more and more 
into the foreground of discussion. When 
one who is furnished with the information 
that is now available looks back upon the 
formative period of these doctrines and 
lays aside prejudice of all sorts, it seems 
extraordinary that the generalization given 
should have aroused the storm of comment 
that it did. For the persons whom Freud 
studied were, speaking broadly, persons 
in whom the evidences of the emotional 
life are always prominent; that is, first 
of all, his patients, then the great class of 
artists of every form and sort, painters, 
sculptors, poets, musicians, writers of fic- 
tion, and representatives of religion and 

86 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

philosophy, of certain types — persons, in 
a word, who have strong emotions which 
they cannot express directly and so must 
express indirectly, — as by symbols. Stat- 
ing this in another way, Freud and the 
psycho-analysts have but followed the lead 
of the innumerable writers of romance, 
song, and drama, seeking only to carry 
further and to express in scientific terms 
what these others had given utterance to 
in other fashions. 

Freud has never asserted it as his opinion, 
and it certainly is not mine, that this is the 
only root from which artistic expression 
springs. On the other hand it is probable 
that all artistic productions are partly 
referable to this source, and a close exam- 
ination of many of them would enable 
any one to justify the opinion that it is a 
source which is largely drawn upon. To 
feel that in saying this I bring an unjust 
accusation against artists and those whose 
expression partakes of the artistic would 

87 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

be to seriously misunderstand my mean- 
ing and the facts at issue. We need not, 
indeed, confine ourselves to writers of 
romance. Every student of folk-lore and 
the histories of primitive races, every 
student of evolution, such as Darwin, is 
aware that reproduction forms an essen- 
tial part of the duty of every living thing, 
and that the preparations for it are multi- 
fold and vast to a degree infinitely tran- 
scending — one might think — the actual 
necessities of the case. It is so imperative 
that plants and animals should provide 
for the perpetuation of their species that 
they adopt inconceivably subtle and varied 
methods to bring this result about and to 
make sure that it shall succeed. It is in 
this light that the whole matter should be 
studied, and no thinking person can remain 
in ignorance of the fact that a large pro- 
portion of the conventions of men's social 
lives have, among other things, this end 
in view. Around this great function of 

88 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

reproduction — a function so inherent that 
even to live or to think is to create or repro- 
duce — emotions center that are stronger, 
more varied, and at the same time more 
repressed than are any other set of motives 
whatsoever. How, then, could it be other- 
wise than that in any great system of emo- 
tional reactions (for as such it is certain that 
"symptoms" should be classified) these 
emotions should be prominent? 

The question need not here be raised 
whether from every point of view it is 
desirable or necessary to classify as sexual 
a large number of phenomena that Freud 
did so classify. For it should be known 
that he came, after a time, to extend this 
designation to every personal relation, of 
whatever sort, in which the "tender emo- 
tions" are conspicuously active. In brief, 
he made it synonymous with the German 
word "lieben" which may be looked upon 
as practically equivalent to our English 
"love." 

89 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

One can readily see, at the same time, 
how it happened that people shrank so 
strongly and so bitterly from accepting 
Freud's aphoristic proposition and declined 
utterly to treat his statements with the 
respect they would have shown to any 
other scientific generalization standing on 
a similar foundation of observation. How 
numerous and important are the conclu- 
sions that have been reached on data 
gathered with less conscientiousness and 
pains and less convincing than those which 
he brought forward! Indeed, one of the 
most interesting and important pieces of 
evidence in the case is the very fact of this 
hostility; and Freud tells us that he him- 
self at first shared in the repugnance, and 
that he might never have reached the 
conclusions he did reach had he not remem- 
bered certain strong opinions casually 
dropped by several of his teachers, which 
he was at first inclined to disbelieve but 
which retained a hold upon his memory. 

90 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

The fact of the presence of this resist- 
ance in people's minds is, I repeat, one of 
the strongest reasons for believing that we 
have here to deal with a set of feelings that 
are, in the first place, intensely strong, 
in the next place vigorously repressed, 
and, in the third place, preserved through 
this very repression as furnishing a real 
and desirable richness of meaning to all 
the acts of daily life in which personal rela- 
tionships are concerned, and also as furnish- 
ing a treasure-house of excitement on which 
we can instinctively draw, even to an unde- 
sirable extent, without making it appear, 
even to ourselves, that this is being done. 

The poet who stirs our emotions with 
his recitals of deeds or thoughts to which 
the term "excess" might justifiably be 
applied has no realization that this excess 
on which he counts has its root in the repres- 
sions of his sex emotions. It is not neces- 
sary that he should become aware of this 
fact, unless as a student in this field. But 

91 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

on the other hand, it is important that 
those persons in society, be they intelligent 
laymen, disinterested mothers, or educators, 
who desire to form their opinions on the 
basis of a real knowledge of human nature, 
should know all that they can of the prin- 
ciples here at stake. 

We often hear it said that Freud and his 
followers have "gone too far" in classi- 
fications of this sort and in the references 
that they make to symbolizations of innu- 
merable sorts. But it is forgotten, or not 
realized, that the use of these symboliza- 
tions dates back for the most part to 
periods so remote that their historical 
origin is shrouded in deep mystery, and, 
on the other hand, that the importance of 
the classification is not apparent until the 
time comes when it must be used to serve 
some really practical end. I repeat, how- 
ever, that the striking fact is the attitude 
of hostility to the suggestion of the validity 
of a classification such as this, an attitude 
. 92 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

which can have no other root than the 
fact that the ideas which it brings up are 
accompanied by emotional tensions so great 
and at the same time so significant and 
in a sense so sacred, that we are unwilling 
to have them played upon, or even clearly 
to recognize them ourselves. 

When we rise to a mental level next 
above the feelings of this class, we find 
ourselves face to face with a sentiment 
which the Church from time to time has 
done so much to foster: that everything 
that has to do with the sexual emotions is 
gross and wrong. This idea is in part, 
no doubt, of Oriental origin, since in the 
East repression has been carried so far 
as to involve even life itself, — as exempli- 
fied, for instance, by the conduct of the 
monks in Thibet, who have themselves 
enclosed, while still comparatively young, 
in caves connecting with the outer world 
only by small openings through which 
insufficient quantities of food are pushed. 

93 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

On the other hand, it has been an accom- 
paniment of the growth of the desire for a 
fuller life of the spirit, and an immortality 
through which the pains and sorrows of 
this world should be shaken off or left 
behind. Some persons consider the body as 
a cage, a prison-house, and the home of dust 
and decay in which we are compelled to live 
but from which we should long and aspire 
to escape. Needless to say, there are 
still many religious sects the world over 
among whom feelings of this sort are 
carried to an unwarrantable point. 

But the fact that has been overlooked 
in all these tendencies is that when we are 
dealing with human nature we are deal- 
ing with a power to which we may, for the 
moment, blind ourselves, and that can be 
modified but cannot be obliterated. 

It is in seeking and finding ever-new 
outlets for these repressed emotions that 
adaptation, often in injurious forms, takes 
place. 

94 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

I have called attention to the fact that 
it is in the periods of infancy and early 
childhood that the lines of least resistance 
are laid down, traits and tendencies formed, 
and compromises adopted which the adult 
needs only to follow later in order to rind 
himself launched on a path of trouble, 
the source of which is hidden even from 
himself. All that I can say on this point, 
to which a volume might easily be devoted, 
must be condensed into a few paragraphs. 
But it is so important that I cannot pass 
it altogether by. 

If any one should imagine that it was 
my intention to characterize the period 
of infancy and childhood as one of gross 
sensuality — of such a sort, for example, 
as really to justify in a psychological sense 
the term "original sin,' 9 which our fathers 
used so freely to cover such facts as those 
of which I am about to speak, he would 
be very much mistaken. On the contrary, 
I feel myself entirely in sympathy with 

95 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

the best that the poets of childhood, such 
as Wordsworth, have maintained. Espe- 
cially do I recognize the truth of the state- 
ment made by Froebel with regard to the 
play of childhood, which he characterizes 
as a pure and spiritual activity, typical 
of the inner natural life in man, saying 
of it that it gives " larger freedom and 
contentment, inner and outer rest, peace 
with the world." One of the best out- 
comes of our elaborate studies in philosophy 
and psychology, in ethics and morals and 
the art of living, would be the recovery, — 
in a form penetrated through with self-con- 
scious recognition, — of the glorious self- 
forgetting spontaneity, the creativeness 
that knows no bounds, the sense of com- 
radeship which competition only strength- 
ens, the power of passing without a 
break from thought and fancy into act, 
the power of recognizing obstacles and limi- 
tations as fences to be climbed, in response 
to a challenge joyfully accepted, — of all 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

of which blessings most children have 
experienced something and imagined more 
under the form of play. 

Nevertheless, it must be recognized also 
that childhood is a time of doubt, disap- 
pointment, and passion, from which, at 
the moment, children often long to get 
away. 

One of the first things the child finds 
when he comes into his new world is that 
he has a greater capacity for sense per- 
ception than he has power to utilize. 
For this reason many of his feelings are 
not what psychologists call feelings of 
relation, — that is, not such as prompt 
him and help him to carry out better cer- 
tain acts the utility of which he is later 
to discover. What wonder is it then, that 
thus placed, thus compelled to occupy him- 
self almost exclusively with his own sensa- 
tions and to build the world of his imagina- 
tion largely on the basis of them, taking 
the persons about him, to a great extent, 

97 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

as sources of possible (and always personal) 
gratification ; what wonder is it that the 
young child should become an egoist, as 
he does? 

Another striking fact about the infant 
is that he comes into the v/orld as the 
inheritor of tendencies which had their 
origin and usefulness in dark periods of 
his development, of which we know the 
history only through the researches of 
biologists. 

To pass hastily onward, I would simply 
state that in the child's next period he 
comes in contact with persons, that is, with 
society, — namely, the society of his mother 
and his nurse. The greatest real service 
that such persons can render the young 
child is to make of themselves a bridge 
over which he may pass into a broader 
life. But too often, led thereto by their 
own selfishness and ignorance, their own 
still living and active immaturity, they 
fail in this important mission and let them- 

98 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

selves become of too much importance 
to the child in and for themselves. 

I will summarize, in brief, by pointing 
out that childhood, consecrate it and admire 
it as we may, corresponds to the period 
of immaturity of the race. It is the 
Unshapen Land of the Greeks, the home 
of fantasies of power and longing. 

One cannot too much admire the myth 
of Hercules (whose strength, it should be 
noted, lay not in his muscles but in his 
reason and his will) who strangled, when 
an infant in his cradle, the serpents sent 
against him by the envious Juno. The 
serpent, as most people are aware, repre- 
sents two things : temptation, as in the 
Garden of Eden, and wisdom, as when it 
is made to symbolize the physician's power 
of healing. It is wholly within the accepted 
interpretation of primitive customs and 
mythology for us to assert, as a meaning 
if not the meaning, of this story, that 
Hercules, in strangling these serpents, sym- 

99 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

bolized the overcoming of temptation on 
the one hand and the gaining of wisdom 
and of force of character on the other. 
It will be remembered, for example, that 
among our own Indians the strength and 
courage of the conquered enemy are sup- 
posed to pass into the soul of the warrior 
by whom he has been vanquished. 

It is needless to say that I appreciate, 
as well as any one, that most children are 
preserved from wandering very far into 
the blind alleys of self-assertion and of 
self-indulgence. Some distance they must 
wander, and some obstacles they must 
conquer. It is well for them that they 
have these obstacles to face ; it is well also 
that the obstacles are not greater. But 
the duty devolves on those who guard 
and guide their footsteps to see that they 
learn not to disguise and repress their pur- 
poses, and do not go too far astray. 

The subject of repression should be 
sufficiently intelligible in its main outlines 
100 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

to any person who has watched with mod- 
erate care his own mental processes; and 
so, also, should some of the reasons be 
clear to him for the resistance which every 
one instinctively opposes to the setting free 
of these repressed thoughts. Less evident 
would it seem, perhaps, to some persons, 
that the emotions which have been re- 
pressed in this fashion, and which are 
recovered with such difficulty, continue to 
play active parts in determining our con- 
duct and forming our motives and our 
thoughts. The testimony for the validity 
of this principle has been extensively fur- 
nished, not alone by Freud, but by psychol- 
ogists of all schools. 

The distinctive feature of the uncon- 
scious life as defined by Freud is not re- 
vealed by the descriptions of those writers 
for whom the terms "unconscious" and 
"subconscious" have the same meaning. 
The number of experiences which a person 
has absolutely forgotten, in the ordinary 

101 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

sense of that word, or which lie for the 
moment outside the circle of his conscious 
attention is, of course, very large ; but the 
interest of the unconscious for the psycho- 
analyst lies not alone in this fact, but as 
much and more in the fact of the energetic 
part which these groups of repressed and 
organized emotions continue to play, on 
which we turn our backs for the distinct 
reason that they have an interest for us 
and yet are felt to be out of harmony with 
the main purposes of our conscious lives. 
If looked at in this way, it might be said 
that these repressed emotions, carefully 
concealed from us though they are, lie 
really near the surface of our minds. We 
close our eyes to them, indeed, but can find 
them, if we are willing, and have taught 
ourselves, to look for them. Should we 
look for them, and should we endeavor to 
break down the resistances within our minds 
that prompt us not to do so ? This ques- 
tion is answered by different sorts of people 
102 



THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC MOVEMENT 

in two different ways. Some persons feel 
that their repressions are natural and useful, 
and that instead of trying to reveal their 
troublesome emotions to themselves they 
should turn away from them and devote 
themselves to some work of usefulness in 
the community. So widely do circum- 
stances vary that there is no general rule 
to give; and I have, indeed, studiously 
avoided going deeply into any medical or 
therapeutical argument. Two things, how- 
ever, I will say. The first is that a per- 
son reaps no benefit from claiming that 
the tendencies which he deprecates are 
not his own, that he is not responsible for 
his unconscious thoughts. In my opinion 
this is one of the numerous reactions of 
defense, and one of an objectionable kind. 
What do we gain, and what does the world 
gain, either the world of science or the 
world of social life, through such a refusal 
on the part of any one to make himself 
responsible for what is really a portion of 
103 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

himself? It is not so much a question of 
who is responsible for these repressed 
emotions as it is of the fact that they are 
playing an important part in our lives 
and in the community, and that we are the 
only persons who can take charge of them. 
It is a matter of choice with each person 
how far he will agree to accept the re- 
sponsibility for his unconscious thoughts. 
He need not do so if he feels that his real 
welfare is best served by keeping them 
concealed and ignoring their existence, 
and if he is not hampered by a haunting 
consciousness of their presence. He does 
himself no indignity, on the other hand, 
if he chooses to consider and study their 
nature and to lay the ghosts of his fears 
and desires by meeting them face to face. 
To do this is usually to find that they 
indicate the presence of tendencies which 
are natural but which need to be under- 
stood, respected, and controlled. 



104 



Chapter IV 
Educational Bearings of Psycho- Analysis 

THE question is often asked by persons 
interested in the psycho-analytic 
movement: "Is it doing anything 
toward the prevention of the evils to which 
it calls attention?" This chapter will 
take up a number of points bearing on 
the problems which the question raises. 
I begin by proposing a modification in the 
form of the question itself, so that it shall 
read: "Has the psycho-analytic move- 
ment brought to light any special prin- 
ciples that persons having to do with the 
education of children or interested in prob- 
lems of social progress can teach themselves 
to utilize?" 

The psycho-analytic method in its com- 
plete form is applicable only as between 

105 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

doctor and patient, and cannot be used 
except on a relatively small scale. If 
anything more extensive is to be accom- 
plished this can be done only through the 
voluntary efforts of intelligent and inter- 
ested persons who are willing to study at 
once themselves and those under their 
charge, and to restrain within modest limits 
their expectations of definite results. 
Neither teachers nor parents can make 
themselves psycho-analysts without a spe- 
cial training. What they can do is to recog- 
nize what the essential aims of the psycho- 
analytic method are, and to what its suc- 
cess is mainly due; and then to make 
themselves masters of a few of the prin- 
ciples which its use has emphasized, and 
to consider in what way these principles 
can be applied to children at large, in the 
schoolroom and at home. 

The aim of the psycho-analytic method, 
as used in medical practice, is to bring 
the whole mass of thoughts and emotions 
106 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

which are actively influencing the motives 
and the conduct of a patient under the 
control of his conscious will. Recognizing 
the fact that these emotions have had no 
adequate outlet and are out of harmony 
with the main body of the motives which the 
patient, as a member of society, acknowl- 
edges as his own, the physician helps him 
to find an outlet for them in speech, and 
to discover in this way a means of recon- 
ciliation between them and "himself." 

The patient is encouraged to give the 
fullest expression to his thoughts, and, to 
this end, to place himself, successively and 
repeatedly and by the aid of memory and 
imagination, in the various situations rep- 
resenting the deeper layers of his present 
ideas and emotions and those of his youth 
and, so far as possible, of his childhood 
and his infancy. These deep-going con- 
versations are the equivalent, in aim, of 
those which every judicious mother and 
teacher gladly encourage child and pupil to 
107 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

carry on, so far as circumstances may 
permit. The sole purpose in undertaking 
them, in the case of the physician and 
his patient, is to aid the latter to define 
the conflicts which harass him and to find 
that the significance of these conflicts shifts 
as he transfers them on to higher levels 
and brings them within the reach of a 
wider knowledge and a broader and more 
generous outlook. 

A conflict thus transferred to a higher 
level is a conflict largely solved; but in 
order that its expression on this level 
should be reached, an appreciative hear- 
ing must first be accorded to it on a level 
that corresponds to the fantasy-weaving 
days of childhood, when the real world was 
of a very different sort from any with which 
the adult, in his ignorance of himself, is 
still familiar. Stevenson has lighted up 
a small fragment of this situation in his 
story, "The Lantern Bearers." He makes 
many a reader thrill with sympathy for 
108 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

the members of this secret order, whose 
deep excitement "over nothing" might, in 
real life, have been dismissed with a smile, 
possibly with a rebuke. 

But if an effort is required to get even 
thus far into our youth, how much harder 
is it to get with complete sympathy into 
those still earlier years which are in fact 
so full of significance for the remainder 
of our lives ! Yet this is a task well worth 
the expenditure of much time and labor. 
The child should be assured of a ready 
hearing and of sympathy for wishes and 
ideas however grotesque, however foreign 
to the hearer's present thought. He should 
find in his parents or teachers persons for 
whom his childish and foolish fancies have 
a value, as they have for himself; patient 
listeners, who do not think him morbid 
because he feels an interest in questions as 
to the origin of his own physical or spiritual 
being. It can not be too strongly urged 
upon every mother that it is her business 

109 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

to understand the child's gropings, or at 
the least not to stifle or check his inquiries, 
whatever direction they may take. 1 The 
essential thing is that the child should be 
given the best possible chance to show all 
that he has in him, of understanding, of 
poetry, of personal power, and that these 
forces should be led gradually into the 
channels of broader social ends. He should 
neither be flattered, nor too much per- 
suaded, nor too much indulged, nor too 
much dominated. If conformity is de- 
manded in lesser matters, as it must be, 
care should be taken that it does not make 
itself felt as a controlling influence through- 
out. 2 

1 1 recommend to the careful reading of all educators an ad- 
mirable book, "The Individual Delinquent," by William Healy, 
whose work in connection with the Juvenile Court of Chicago is 
well known. 

2 It is true that society hates a non-conformist, but the tendency 
to accept this attitude should be regarded with suspicion. Each 
individual may be said to be surrounded with an invisible net. 
So long as he conforms, he does not feel the net ; but let him try 
to break away from conformity, and he finds himself a prisoner. 
This situation is, however, more subtle and more interesting than 

110 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

Above all, the possibility should be 
recognized by parents and teachers that 
to indulge or to dominate a child often 
means only to seek an outlet for one's own 
desires. 

It is no doubt true that there is a cer- 
tain danger of over-doing intimate con- 
versations with children, just as there is 
danger attaching to almost every powerful 
influence. So long as free talking means 
continuous progress, and especially so long 
as it is found to lead to a greater sense of 
freedom and happiness, to an increased 
participation in the child's companionship, 
its effect may justly be estimated as bene- 
ficial. If the time arrives when the desire 
to talk becomes a source of undue excite- 
ment or morbid gratification on the child's 
part, it should be regarded as the con- 

the illustration would suggest. A certain amount"? of non-con- 
formity is permitted, so that we may have the sense of being free. 
Deceived in this way, many persons fail to realize to what extent 
they are enslaved. But the sense of dependence may, in its turn, 
be coveted and is a temptation to be shunned. 

Ill 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

dition calling for careful consideration on 
its own merits. 

The criterion of willingness on the part 
of the child to recognize himself as a social 
being, whether in play or work, is of the 
highest value. It is the community which 
is the unit, not the individual regarded as 
alone. Even the most misanthropic, the 
most shy, self-conscious, and unsociable or 
a-sociable of persons virtually recognizes 
this truth. To social life of some sort the 
affection and devotion of the parent should 
be the avenue and the bridge. 

I am not dealing here, however, with 
the innumerable troubles and dangers to 
which children are exposed, but am only 
suggesting measures which all thoughtful 
and intelligent parents can profitably use 
with a view to keeping their children from 
forming too strongly the repression habit. 
Any emotional excess carries with it a 
certain danger, and yet no development can 
be ideal. Every decision involves cutting 

m 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

oneself off from some other choice, and 
the only question is what general rules 
can be adopted through which to place one- 
self within the range of favorable chances. 
The river of life must flow onward, and 
the child must learn to forget himself in 
affection, play, and work. It is certain, 
however, that there will be eddies and back- 
waters in the river which will more or less 
impede its flow. 

Another danger that the researches of 
psycho-analysts have done much to illu- 
minate has reference to the significance of 
this or that act, — this or that objection- 
able or self-indulgent habit, for example, — 
regarded in itself. I wish to call attention 
to the fact that too much stress is often 
laid upon the act, and too little upon the 
tendency of which the particular act may 
be a sign. The significance, for educational 
purposes, of an act interpreted as a sign 
is often very great, whereas if the attention 
of the parent and the child is concentrated 

113 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

on the act itself the result may be that 
the underlying tendency passes uncorrected 
and shows itself in some new form. The 
ancient myth of the Old Man of the Sea 
may profitably be recalled in this connec- 
tion, as illustrating how fertile a dominant 
tendency may show itself in the invention 
of ever new manifestations of itself. Her- 
cules, in this instance, who had the intelli- 
gence to see through these diversities of 
form to the motive that underlay them, 
may serve as the representative of the in- 
telligent parent or teacher who does not 
allow his imagination to be carried away 
too easily with the idea that because he 
has induced the child to repress some out- 
ward habit he has necessarily aided him 
thereby to overcome the self-indulgent 
motive of which the habit w T as only one 
expression. 

The next question that arises is as to 
the mental qualifications of the parent or 
the teacher to serve as instructor of the 

114 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

child. I believe that in preparation for 
this task they could and should scrutinize 
carefully their own unconscious tendencies 
and motives. In making this attempt 
they should determine to avoid the pitfall 
of self -depreciation and self-reproach, — 
a habit which is exceedingly enticing be- 
cause it can mask itself as a rational 
acknowledgment of error, whereas it is in 
reality little else than a form of egotism. 
The intelligent commander wishing to push 
forward against an enemy that he fears 
does not pause long to dwell upon his mis- 
takes ; and yet he makes himself aware of 
them. What is needed by most people 
is more knowledge of the possibilities, 
capacities, and dangers which lie about the 
pathways of their children and themselves ; 
but the habit of passing judgments and 
forming moral estimates is more likely to 
hamper than to help. On the other hand, 
any one may properly feel at liberty to 
view with suspicion emotional excess in 
115 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

every form. Each individual must decide, 
with reference to a given case, what form he 
will let his feelings take, but should prepare 
himself to discover that an over-strong 
emotion of one sort is pretty certain to be 
counterbalanced by some opposing ten- 
dency of which he is unaware. The wisest 
person is he who can clearly see both these 
antagonistic tendencies. But it is of some 
value to know that they are there, and 
strengthened by that knowledge to march 
forward toward the performance of our 
tasks, rilled with sympathy for our neigh- 
bors, and rilled, too, with the strong desire 
to do our best for the welfare of the com- 
munity. 

There is a tendency among physicians and 
teachers to make their personal influence 
over their patients or pupils count as too 
strong a factor. They do not sufficiently 
realize, in doing this, that the ultimate 
result may be to diminish the latter's sense 
of independence. I emphasize this point 

116 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

because psycho-analysts have studied it 
with especial care. They have shown the 
dangers and objections attendant on such 
relations and have taken pains to guard 
their patients and themselves against them. 
Through considering the subject of sick- 
ness, on the one hand, and health, on the 
other, and the relationship between the 
two, I learned long ago to realize that 
nervous invalids are indistinguishable, both 
in theory and practice, from the people who 
are classified as "well." There are few 
among us who have not suffered in some 
measure under unreasonable fears, the sense 
of estrangement, compulsions, obsessions 
or analogous disorders, such as destroy the 
savor of life for so many fine, courageous 
persons, and none who have not felt the 
yoke of temperamental traits that are of 
the same origin with these symptoms. 
Almost all men, when exposed to stress 
and strain, show characteristics of objec- 
tionable sorts. In reality, these charac- 

117 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

teristics should be thought of as always 
present although usually concealed, and 
there is no sufficient reason why one per- 
son should plume himself on the absence 
of these traits or why another should 
blame himself because he has them. Men- 
tal good health is more clearly evidenced 
by the desire to learn how best to deal with 
the qualities of which we find ourselves in 
charge than in fixing the gaze on the re- 
spects in which we seem to be superior. 
It might be said that all men warm their 
hands at the fire where some get burned, 
— the fire, namely, of emotional excitement 
and repression, — and we should not hesi- 
tate to admit this fact. 

The true relationship between "sick- 
ness" and "health," from the particular 
point of view here under consideration, 
becomes much clearer when the fact is 
borne in mind that the symptoms of 
disease in general are to be thought of as 
in part the signs of reactions of a normal 
118 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

sort. Disease is often popularly considered 
as nothing but a "visitation," a misfortune, 
to be recovered from if possible and other- 
wise to be endured with such fortitude as 
one can muster. With increasing knowl- 
edge of pathological processes it became 
evident, however, many years ago, that a 
good many of the phenomena, even of 
bodily disease, could be better classified 
as phenomena of health. Reactions of 
this sort (that is, healthy responses on the 
part of the organism to the challenge of 
difficulty) are always to be discovered if 
one looks for them. Nature is always 
active, and just as surely as water seeks 
everywhere its level or as melted wax 
accommodates itself to rough surfaces so 
does this tendency toward the establish- 
ment of new equilibriums show itself, even 
from the moment when the forces of de- 
struction set about their work. The results 
of these reactions are interesting and in- 
structive from the scientific standpoint, 
119 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

but not invariably satisfactory from the 
standpoint of the individual regarded as 
a member of society. Compensation, often- 
times so useful, may pass into over-com- 
pensation of a harmful sort. We must be 
prepared, in any case, to see a very differ- 
ent result from that which our narrow 
experience had led us to expect. In our 
dread of responsibility and of getting far 
from "goal" we often underrate the re- 
sources of nature and of ourselves, and in- 
stinctively repel every change even if for 
a gain. But no gain comes without sacri- 
fice, and Emerson shows himself to be a 
sound observer in saying : 

"When good is near you, when you have 
life in yourself, it is not by any known or 
accustomed way; you shall not discern 
the footprints of any other; you shall not 
see the face of man; you shall not hear 
any name ; — the way, the thought, the 
good, shall be wholly strange and new." 

I first learned the propriety of thus 
looking upon disease as a "reaction" and 
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EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

upon many of its phenomena as actual 
indications of progress toward a new sort 
of health, at a period, about forty years 
ago, when it was my privilege to become 
acquainted with J. Hughlings Jackson of 
London, one of the great philosophers in 
medicine. I well remember the strong 
impression made upon my mind when he 
pointed out that what we were in the habit 
of calling the signs of defect and failure 
on the part of human organisms assumed 
to be suffering under some malign influence, 
were really signs of an instinctive attempt 
on the part of those organisms to reassert 
themselves. To use the illustration that 
Jackson then employed, let us suppose we 
are in the presence of some one who, in 
consequence of a lesion of the brain, is 
unable to talk intelligibly, and who, in 
trying to do so, gives forth a flood of inco- 
herent sounds. To the friends of such a 
patient each new utterance of this sort is 
one sign the more of the misfortune which 

121 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

has befallen him and seems to open a new 
vista into a distressing future. But let 
the observer think himself more accurately 
into the situation, endeavoring from the 
standpoint of scientific appreciation to 
look deeply into the process going on within 
the patient's mind and brain, and it will 
be seen that behind all this jargon speech 
there lies a genuine effort to find means 
of adequate expression, and that forces 
are at work in him which tend, on the 
whole, toward the recovery of a relatively 
stable equilibrium. What we, then, as 
students of scientific truth, desiring to 
become familiar with the resources of 
life at its best, should let ourselves be most 
impressed with, is not the signs of disor- 
ganization in such a patient's case, but the 
signs of a healthy power and determina- 
tion on the part of the elemental forces of 
his being to find some new means of read- 
justment. These elemental forces should be 
reinforced by insight, intelligence, and will. 

122 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

" Fear not then, thou child infirm, 
There's no god dare wrong a worm ; 
Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, 
And power to him who power exerts. 
Hast not thy share ? On winged feet, 
Lo ! it rushes thee to meet ; 
And all that Nature made thy own, 
Floating in air or pent in stone, 
Will rive the hills and swim the sea, 
And, like thy shadow, follow thee." 

If one compares a series of these reac- 
tions, differing from each other in com- 
plexity, it will be found possible, after ex- 
tending the list somewhat at each end, to 
obtain a fresh and striking illustration 
of one of the main theses of this book. 

The principal forms of reaction thus 
far considered have been those involving 
biological and pathological processes, rather 
than those of the mental life. In order 
to bring out clearly, however, the idea that 
I have in mind, I will call to the attention 
of the reader that there are other forms 
of response which are characteristic of 
123 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

certain processes of nature that do not 
involve organic life at all, and yet which 
simulate reactions of organic life. Some 
of the phenomena relating to the repair of 
injured crystals are of this sort, and there 
are others which show perhaps even more 
strikingly than this, that tendencies exist 
which cause even the inorganic world to 
react in a quasi-purposive manner to dis- 
turbances of its equilibrium. In the case 
of the crystals, no matter what the injury 
may be, the outcome of these responses is, 
under favorable conditions restoration of 
the damaged structure to its original form. 
Not only this, but chemists and physi- 
cists have shown * that a closer relationship 
than has usually been recognized exists 
between natural phenomena and the higher 
needs of organic life. The earth's crust, 
it would appear, was prepared for the 
coming of beings of the type and with the 
requirements of man. 

1 L. J. Henderson : "Fitness of Environment." 
124 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

Reactions on the next higher level are 
of the type of those which biologists have 
dealt with under the name of tropisms; 
and with them may be ranged the phenom- 
ena which have been studied by physi- 
cians with reference to the repair of wounds. 
Passing to a higher level still, we come to 
the reactions that are mainly in question 
in this chapter, through which the symp- 
toms of nervous invalidism come into 
existence. In these reactions, the patient's 
conscious intelligence seems to take no part ; 
but on the other hand the unconscious pro- 
cesses are extensively concerned in their 
production. And since these unconscious 
processes are hardly to be spoken of except 
as portions of our personalities, — por- 
tions for which we should, strictly speaking, 
make ourselves responsible, — it may be 
said that here the mental life intervenes 
strongly in the determination of the out- 
come. 

It will, I trust, be understood that these 
125 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

nervous symptoms differ in no essential 
respect from a large group of other phe- 
nomena which would ordinarily be classified 
as temperamental traits ; and for the sake 
of making the comparison seem more 
reasonable, we will assume that reference is 
here made to traits which cause annoyance 
to those possessing them, or interfere with 
their happiness and their usefulness as 
members of society. The generalizations 
of Hughlings Jackson were cited mainly 
to show that the conceptions with refer- 
ence to disease which we employ to serve 
our daily needs are misleading when they 
are adopted as the basis of a scientific classi- 
fication. I make this statement here again 
in the hope that by offering a somewhat 
more scientific explanation of these traits 
and symptoms I can make it easier for 
those who are hampered by them to deal 
with them to better purpose. It is an im- 
portant fact that the elemental, pleasure- 
loving tendencies of our nature, which are 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

always prominent in childhood, continue 
to make themselves felt in later years, 
though without coming clearly to our 
consciousness. At the same time every 
one is under the necessity of conforming 
to social conventions, and to the demands 
of conscience which, broadly speaking, is of 
social origin. Such being the case, let us 
assume that a child, in consequence of con- 
flicts within his mind occurring as the result 
of temptations — not necessarily very im- 
portant from the adult standpoint — ac- 
quires the habit of anxiety. Groping for 
means to free himself from this state, he 
instinctively refers this anxiety to some 
special cause ; and thus is developed one or 
another, or a series, of the meaningless 
fears of which every one has heard and 
which most persons have experienced. 

The point to which I desire to call 

attention is that to thus shift the burden 

of the anxiety from its unknown origin 

to an apparently reasonable cause which is 

127 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

not in fact the real cause, is a sort of 
response which in a sense represents a 
"gain." Wholly incapable of arguing out 
the whole process in his mind, the child 
feels the original strain of the conflict as 
something from which he seeks relief. By 
dint of what we will now speak of as a 
reaction (casting aside the misleading name 
of "illness"), he states the problem to 
himself in a form which has at least the 
appearance of rationality, not realizing that 
in his symptoms his repressed emotions are 
present in disguise. 

Looking at the matter in this way, we 
can see that the reaction as a whole, while 
it induces a result which in itself is unde- 
sirable, and one for which those who desire 
to help the child would gladly substitute 
a better outcome, brings with it an adjust- 
ment which, if his unconscious mind had 
the power to express itself, would be recog- 
nized as beneficial. The number of pos- 
sible reactions of this kind is almost indefi- 

128 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

nitely large, and they occur, wholly or in 
part, without the conscious awareness or 
cooperation of the person concerned. 

The justice of this conception becomes 
clearer if one scrutinizes the significance of 
one's own fits of temporary depression, 
or if one considers the psychology of a fit 
of anger, or of self -depreciation. These are 
illustrations of the principle that I have 
in mind. Whatever else "the blues" ac- 
complish, they certainly afford us a chance 
to bury ourselves in a sea of self-engross- 
ment; and as for passion, it is far easier 
to fly into that state than it is to find a 
rational solution of a given difficulty. We 
do not desire, in one sense, either the de- 
pression or the anger; that is, in the 
fullness of our higher self-conscious wishes 
we do not so desire. For this reason the 
idea is always resented that we lend our- 
selves to such results as these. Neverthe- 
less, it is we who fall into these states and 
it is we who derive whatever partial and 
129 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

unsatisfactory benefit is obtainable through 
them. If, therefore, we choose to place 
ourselves in an attitude of responsibility 
toward our mental processes, the terms 
"desire" and "gain" as applying to these 
symptoms or reactions seem not wholly 
out of place. 

This same statement may be made of a 
large proportion of our common symptoms, 
as well as of the objectionable traits and 
tendencies of emotion in general. There 
is something in the person so reacting that 
welcomes the result, even if the person as 
a whole would gladly have rejected it. 

Finally, we come to the highest reactions 
of all, — those which every one would 
recognize to be in harmony with his best 
purposes and will and would wish to make 
habitual. They involve self-sacrifice and 
a postponement of narrower and more per- 
sonal desires in the interests of the larger 
social whole of which each individual is a 
member and a representative. 

130 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

If, now, we glance once more over this 
whole series of reactions, what shall we 
consider as their nature? It is impossible 
to regard some of them as of one origin 
and the rest as of a wholly different sort, 
without denying the unity of nature. If 
the simpler reactions are determined by 
some influence of which a physical or a 
chemical phenomenon is usually to be 
regarded as the type, have we a right to 
classify the rest, even those which have 
here been denominated as highest, in the 
same category? On the other hand, shall 
we follow the reverse process and regard 
the whole series as in some sense "per- 
sonal"? I have said enough to indicate 
that my judgment is in favor of the latter 
choice; and I call attention to the fact 
that a number of eminent students of 
evolution have pointed out that the law 
of the survival of the fittest no longer 
seems to afford an adequate explanation 
of conduct the moment we pass from the 

131 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

consideration of the acts of animals lower 
in the scale than man to the motives and 
the acts of man himself. 

Treatment by psycho-analysis, in brief, 
is a kind of education. The largest part 
of the benefit to be derived from it is to 
be obtained not so much through the dis- 
covery of the special hidden cause or causes 
of this or that particular symptom, as 
through the general development of char- 
acter that goes on gradually as a result 
of the removal of the inhibitions by which 
this development which is part of the nor- 
mal birthright of every individual had 
been hitherto obstructed. It is sometimes 
tempting, for the sake of a striking simile, 
to recall to oneself the story of the "Frog 
Prince" or some kindred fairy-tale or myth, 
as hinting at the possibility of a sudden 
change of temperament in the desired direc- 
tion. But although the simile is a sound 
one if rightly used, a fairer illustration of 
the course of improvement in most cases 

132 



EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS 

would be the process of repair through 
which an organism long a prey to some dis- 
ease is gradually aided to regain its health. 
In proportion as one gains a more fully 
developed character, through the removal 
of fixations or harmful trends of character 
and temperament, and of the inhibitions 
based thereon — that is, in proportion as 
one exchanges immaturity for maturity 
through education — in this same propor- 
tion will one's unfavorable tendencies grad- 
ually pass away, or undergo modification 
for the better. 



133 



Chapter V 
Instincts and Ideals 

I PRESENT in this chapter two dia- 
grams and a table which are intended 
to explain, as if seen from a new 
angle, some of the principles asserted in 
the foregoing pages, together with certain 
others that have not as yet been offered. 
The first two figures should be understood 
simply as illustrating the doctrine that 
both of the two forms of influence so fre- 
quently referred to make themselves felt 
at every point in a person's life and play 
their respective parts in the determination 
of all his acts. 

Figure I represents the view that a man's 

ideal possibilities are implicitly and infer- 

entially present (or "immanent") in all 

that he is and does throughout his life. 

134 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

These ideal possibilities are active in pro- 
portion to the degree that the individual 
life conforms to the type of the universe- 
life, and are therefore more effective accord- 
ing as the individual is more really mature ; 
but it is suggested that they exist as real 
forces even in earliest infancy. 

oo 

Maturity — 



•--- Immaturity--- 
FIG. I. FIG. II. 

Figure II shows that the converse is 
true of a man's tendency to adaptation 
and compromise. This tendency also is 
present throughout life, but is greater or 
less according as immaturity is greater or 
less. 

The most "real" thing about a man 
may be defined, I think, as the creative 
135 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

spirit which is immanent in him and 
without which he cannot do his best. 
This immanent, creative energy I have 
indicated in Figure I by the mathematical 
sign of infinity. 

Taken at their face value, these figures 
might seem to imply a belief on my part 
that the influence which I have designated 
as man's immanent ideal is felt more in 
later life than it is in infancy, and that the 
reverse is true of the influences which at- 
tend the necessity of dealing with the 
repressed emotions and their consequences. 
Such an assertion as this would be only 
relatively true, however, and if it had 
been convenient I should have avoided 
altogether, by the use of different colors, 
the implication given through the heavier 
and lighter shading. The idea presented 
has been brought forward in earlier pages, 
and seems indeed simple enough. But 
it is not usually accepted to the extent 
that I believe it should be. 

136 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

With regard to the doctrine in accord- 
ance with which "immanence" is possible 
and at the same time not incompatible 
with personal independence, I would ask 
again that each person consider his rela- 
tion to his own thoughts, to his "team," 
his family, or his country. If it be urged 
that the influence of one's "team," or 
family, or country is immanent only in 
the sense that it forms a part of one's 
subconscious thoughts, I can only say 
that I think such an objection is philo- 
sophically untenable and incomplete. If, 
instead of emphasizing the physical sepa- 
rateness of an individual, one considers 
him as an incident in the continuous life of 
innumerable lines of energy, it will seem 
easier to admit, I think, that an individ- 
ual life passes over into other lives. 
The seedling of a tree, if considered at any 
given moment, may be called an inde- 
pendent thing or organism. But looked 
at in another way, this portion of the 

137 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

tree's life is certainly not to be considered 
as apart from the creative energy that 
made that tree possible and might create 
others of like sort. In each and every 
particular animal or plant the creative 
energy of the corresponding species is 
certainly "immanent"; and if we had the 
perspicacity to see it we should undoubt- 
edly find some sign, some anatomical mark 
even, in each part of such an organism, at 
each moment of its development, in which 
its entire history would be hinted at or 
foreshadowed. This is a proposition which 
the microscope cannot demonstrate as true. 
But when one looks at a fern in the early 
summer and finds at its root the prepara- 
tion for the new ferns of the next year, 
it seems impossible to doubt that one is 
in the presence of a tendency which could 
be traced much further. 

Figures I and II, as I have said, illus- 
trate the same principle, but in Figure II 
the application of the principle is reversed. 

138 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

As the better is immanent in the less 
good, and as a man's best possibilities 
exert an influence even while the necessity 
for adaptation and compromise seems pres- 
ent, so the necessity for adaptation and 
compromise extends throughout his life 
and makes its influence felt in modifying 
even the most constructive acts and 
thoughts. 

One illustration will be sufficient at this 
point, though many others will be found 
scattered through the book. I take it 
from the great subject of love, parent 
alike of good and harm. The best that 
this magic word implies corresponds to 
the best possibilities of man's nature. 
But the great and sacred word may be 
used like the flag of an honorable nation 
hoisted over a pirate's ship. To be genuine 
and at its best, the love for another person 
should mean the desire to do for that per- 
son the best that could be done, or to 
arouse in him the best that he is capable 

139 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

of expressing. It aims to induce in the 
person loved something of the same sense 
of freedom and unselfish devotion by which 
it is itself inspired. A close inspection 
often reveals the fact that even when love 
for another seems most warm the dominant 
impulse may be a passionate love of self. 
This admixture should be recognized and 
the misplaced energy gradually diverted to 
a better channel. But the situation should 
not be complicated through the introduc- 
tion of self -depreciation, which leads to no 
good outcome. 



140 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

TABLE 

Disinterested love 
Conscious reason 

Imagination serving the interests of reason 
Conscious will, based on reason 
Genuineness, as in art, science, and ac- 
tivity in any department of life 
Adaptation, consciously directed 

Knowledge 

Rationalization used to secure relief from 
the sense of disharmony 

Compromise unconsciously adopted 

Reactions of defense 

Self-assertion, sometimes useful, some- 
times harmful 

" Will to Power " 

Egoism; self-love. 

Fantasy, of immature type, used in the 
interests of self-love, sense of power 
and excitement 

Passion; emotional excess, fear based 
on desire, etc., etc. 

Cravings; persistence of immature, ele- 
mental desires, desire to inflict or 
suffer pain 

Instincts 

Undifferentiated energy in emotional 
form 

141 



B 



CO 




V 


> 


a 


B 


CO 

a. 


3 


a 


< 


B 


a 


o 


H 


1 


a 

o 




H 


W 


| 






6' 


3 


0- 


OJ 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

This table aims to make easier of com- 
prehension some of the different stages 
through which every person must pass in 
the course of his journey from the period 
of birth, and more especially from the time 
when as a child he begins to eat of the 
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, up 
to the later period when, by the aid of 
experience well utilized, he reaches the 
summit of his possibilities. Although, in 
general terms, this journey is spoken of 
as the passage from youth to mature life, 
it would be better characterized, in a 
psychological sense, as a passage from a 
virtual immaturity to a virtual maturity. 
For maturity does not necessarily imply 
fullness of years; nor is fullness of years 
capable by itself of eliminating immaturity. 

It seemed to me impossible to represent 
in a diagram the interpenetration and 
coalescence which characterize the different 
qualities suggested in the table. Students 
of psychology know well that into each 
142 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

act and thought of a given moment the 
whole past experience of the actor or the 
thinker enters. But one may go further 
than this and assert, as I have endeavored 
to make clear, that in a certain sense the 
possibilities of the future are foreshadowed 
in the occurrences of the present. 

It is also impossible to indicate by the 
table the fact that the denominations used 
are intended to be suggestive only, and 
that their significance changes with the 
changing circumstances of a given case. 
Self-assertion and egoism, for example, are 
of value if thought of, not as a final state 
but as bridges or stepping-stones toward 
some better outcome. Self-assertion and 
egoism may, however, be only euphemisms 
for overbearing domination, the narrowness 
which robs sympathy of its best attributes, 
and thoughtlessness pointing toward 
cruelty. Each one of these objectionable 
qualities may be hidden (through repres- 
sion), though its presence in the uncon- 

143 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

scious mind may be hinted at through the 
outward display of its opposite, just as 
love and hate, fear and desire, etc., form 
natural couples, only one half of which 
is manifested externally. More common 
than this is the situation in which self- 
assertion limits progress, as seen in the case 
of the wife of the clergyman in "The Ser- 
vant in the House," and in the narrow 
attitudes of religious sects, sometimes pass- 
ing into a latitudinarianism which in its 
turn, runs the danger of sinking into 
indifferentism. 

It is unnecessary to say more about the 
contrast between disinterested love and 
passionate or self-love. But a word may 
be added about the contrast which this 
tabular view points out between the power 
of imagination and fantasy in its different 
forms. One often hears it said that the 
imagination, so vivid in the child, but 
present at all ages, is one of man's most 
splendid attributes. And so it is, in so 
144 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

far as it fulfils its best offices and serves 
the constructive interests of the highest 
reason, love, and will. But here again, as 
in the case of love, too little distinction is 
made between the uses to which imagina- 
tion can be put. Sometimes, as so often 
happens in the case of the child and the 
immature adult, or of the hidden, immature 
yet active portion of each person's nature, 
this noble gift is employed for the sake of 
furnishing excitement as an amusement, 
and the results of over-indulgence in this 
habit are disastrous. Too often it leads 
to the pernicious discovery that the dull- 
ness of life can be readily exchanged for, 
or compensated by, a series of dramas 
which one's power of unconscious fantasy- 
building can easily make as exciting as 
may be desired (that is, as exciting as one's 
habits of childhood have set up the taste 
for). But, unfortunately, while the im- 
agined tragedies of childhood as pictured 
in fantasies and daydreams may be sources 
145 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

of gratification only, the same imagined 
tragedies, clothed in the garments which 
the real fears of adult life have woven, 
form companions of a very different sort. 

The better use of the imagination is 
that of serving to illuminate the dark and 
dull places of one's life and of giving clues 
to the investigating power of reason. It 
is with the repression into the subconscious 
life of the fantasies of immature type that 
their potency for harm begins. 

In the passage from the narrow life of 
immaturity, egoism, passion, craving, and 
self-assertion — cultivated in and for them- 
selves — to the disinterested life which it 
is every one's birthright to enjoy, there are 
many intermediate goals, some of which 
might count virtually as the final goal. I 
have attempted, in the table, to indicate 
the value of some of these results, by 
speaking of "genuineness," as in art, 
science, and occupations of all sorts. The 
chemist working, perhaps, unseen and un- 
146 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

known in his laboratory, but with the rest 
of mankind inferentially and virtually 
present in his mind, is in reality doing con- 
structively social work of a high order. 
So, too, there are persons who do not pro- 
fess religion, many indeed who may 
avowedly discard religion in the ordinary 
sense, yet who are moving, even in so 
doing, toward a life of ideal usefulness, in 
the same sense that this is true of persons 
of the Abou Ben Adhem type. I would 
only urge that such workers might profit- 
ably go one step further than they do, 
and become the conscious and out-spoken 
advocates of the principles which they 
practice. The person whose mind works 
rationally, and who is willing to think out 
his thoughts and to accept the ultimate 
conclusions to which his inferences lead, 
surely gains something of value through a 
more positive assertion of his faith. 

Having thus, I trust, made it clear that 
I have placed at one end of this table the 
147 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

qualities which mark one of the poles of 
human motives and at the other end the 
qualities which mark the other pole, I 
would call attention to a few other points 
of interest which the table may help to 
make more clear. In the first place, the 
attempts at self -satisfying "rationaliza- 
tion," etc., are the attempts which every 
individual makes, from earliest childhood 
onward, to square the world with his 
desire on the one hand and with his limited 
intelligence and limited power of love, will, 
and insight, on the other. Feeling appre- 
hensive, or inclined to worry, or in any 
sense threatened with discomfort, he adopts 
an explanation which satisfies him for the 
moment, and yet which is very far from 
laying bare the real cause of the uncom- 
fortable situation. This real cause lies 
usually in his own temperament and is 
closely related to a variety of experiences 
of early life through which the tendency 
in question was emphasized and intensified. 

148 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

All of us are subject to this habit, and if it 
seems a necessary one and does bring us a 
certain amount of relief, yet it has its very 
objectionable side. The best method by 
which to break away from this rationaliz- 
ing habit is to make abundant use of 
knowledge and self -scrutiny. 

I have placed "knowledge" between 
"genuineness" and the rationalizing and 
egoistic tendencies, because knowledge is, 
in its pure form, a tool which we can use 
as if relatively, though of course not abso- 
lutely detached from the other qualities of 
the mind. 

Another point should be made clear. 
The defect in all the genetic methods of 
studying human nature is that they assume 
as "given" the energies that express them- 
selves as "instincts," or in the "tropisms" 
and other vital processes which antedate 
our instincts and are believed to explain 
them. But this habit of procedure, while 
it is necessary for the researches in ques- 

149 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

tion, indicates a limitation of their useful- 
ness. It is all very well to say that our 
instincts, when brought into conflict with 
one another, work out to this or that result. 
But from what source do our instincts 
come ? I believe there is only one possible 
source of all power in the world. Good, 
bad, and indifferent, so long as we are 
anything at all, we are the children of the 
self -active energy, the "purus actus," of 
which the whole universe and each smallest 
part of it consist. 

It is impossible to express through a 
diagram or table the fact to which I wish 
next to call attention, but reference to it 
belongs in this place. The essential func- 
tion of all life is to reproduce and to per- 
petuate itself, in some form. To live or 
to think is, in essence, to endeavor com- 
pletely to express, and thus to reproduce, 
ourselves, in our dealings with the outer 
world and with all the problems which come 
before us. Every motive is a creative 
150 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

tendency, — a tendency to make some new 
step toward the establishment of a rela- 
tionship between the world without us and 
the world within us. Biology teaches the 
same lesson. 

Finally, I wish to call attention to the 
fact that the different tendencies of human 
nature to which different motives corre- 
spond, may be thought of better as super- 
imposed, one upon the other (or as inter- 
woven or mutually interpenetrating), than 
as arranged in the linear series which the 
necessities of diagram and table-making 
require. Whenever a person finds himself 
confronted by a difficult problem, — a 
situation which repeats itself with each 
one of us at every moment, — he must 
necessarily meet that problem in a great 
many different ways at once. He seems 
to respond to it finally with a single act, 
due, one might suppose, to a single motive. 
But if we had the power to look into the 
facts, we should find that the problem had 
151 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

appealed to every layer, so to speak, of 
the man's nature, and that the various 
responses corresponding to these different 
layers had played definite parts in the 
determination of the result. The final act 
of response to such a problem fails to 
give any adequate idea of the different ele- 
ments of this medley of emotions and of 
thoughts, although expert observers can 
see in it something of the medley. 

The inferences which I desire to draw 
are two in number : In the first place, all 
these partial emotions lend a certain rich- 
ness to the result conceived of as a complex 
thought or as a motive; and, again, the 
analysis of these complex thoughts and 
emotions into their partial elements is often 
of the highest value. 

I had at first intended to introduce a 
diagram to indicate the tendency which 
the development of every individual ex- 
hibits in greater or less measure, to become 
checked or arrested at one or another stage, 

152 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

with the result that subsequent develop- 
ment becomes modified in a specific way. 
It seemed probable, however, that this 
would give rise to misunderstandings, and 
the attempt was abandoned. 

It is common enough to hear it said that 
this or that person has never thoroughly 
grown up, but remains in some respects a 
child, or reverts easily to childish ways. 
Few of those who make such a remark 
realize, however, to what degree it is pos- 
sible to define the meaning of this state- 
ment, or how important it sometimes is to 
do so. Neither is it sufficiently recognized 
that, in another sense, the period of child- 
hood may be taken as typical of the best 
outcome of one's development. 1 

Childhood may be divided into several 
important phases. There is the phase of 
birth, the phase of growing interest on the 
part of the child in himself (which may 
take on a very intense form), and the 

1 Wordsworth's Ode, "Intimations of Immortality." 
153 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

phase of interest in others, first as resem- 
bling and repeating himself, then as fur- 
nishing a supplement to himself and giving 
an opportunity for the expenditure of 
rapidly evolving interest and affection. It 
has been found that instead of going 
steadily onward through these different 
phases toward a further stage of develop- 
ment in which better possibilities will be- 
come revealed, the child's progress may 
be checked in any one of them in such a 
way that the main line of development is 
interfered with to a greater or less degree, 
and sometimes seriously. These relative 
arrests, or "fixations," give rise to special 
sorts of cravings or temptations which 
always remain lurking in the background. 
The kind of fixation or arrest which it is 
easiest to understand is that which results 
in egoism of an aggravated sort. The 
tendency to be egoistic, to love to see one- 
self on a pinnacle without regard to the 
way in which one gets there, is always 
154 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

present in some measure and is often very 
difficult to shake off. Child or man, we 
all long to see ourselves prominent, and 
instinctively devise a thousand ways of 
cultivating this longing without seeming to 
ourselves to be doing so. The child in his 
development may be supposed to touch, 
or follow for short distances, many lines of 
evolution which he shortly afterward re- 
jects. And yet, in times of stress, he is 
likely to revert to them again because they 
represent periods of his existence which in 
his infancy and immaturity made strong 
claims on his attention. 

I have attempted in Figure III to indi- 
cate a few of these side-tracks, the psycho- 
logical history of which is so remarkable, 
and which are to be thought of as occurring 
(under the influence of some special stress) 
as the secondary result of a relative arrest 
of development at one or another phase of 
infancy (not indicated in the figure). The 
more important of these side-tracks are 
155 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

the inveterate egoism above mentioned, 
the tendency to over-done individualism, 
self-assertion, "will to power," through 
which the development of individuals and 



°' < "&' 
*<?? 



Maturity 



^ 






r 



^ 



/ 



r? e 



fgs 



** 



s** 



Infancy 
FIG. HI. 



nations is often checked. Individualism 
and self-assertion have at times been 
lauded as so valuable that to attack them 
seems almost a ground for criticism. And 
indeed it is true that the willingness to go 
156 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

forward and bear one's burdens and if pos- 
sible one's neighbor's, to say "No," to 
espouse a cause which is unpopular, to cast 
aside the tendency to seek excuses for one's 
existence, to expose oneself to risk of life 
or reputation, indicates a possible line of 
progress of a fine sort. Such willingness 
means progress if it leads onward to some- 
thing better still; but if this does not 
happen, it indicates a real arrest. The in- 
dividualism which plays so large a part 
in the poems and essays of Emerson, for 
example, and which was quietly but firmly 
exemplified by him in life, constitutes a 
noble trait. But all readers of Emerson 
must be aware that this doctrine was 
preached by him as a stepping-stone 
toward the same recognition of depend- 
ence on duties and ideals that I have 
endeavored in this essay to emphasize as 
important. One cannot read Nietzsche's 
fiery lines without feeling that his in- 
dividualism also had much to recommend 
157 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

it, based, as it was, on the doctrine of 
the voluntary endorsement of that which 
each person finds genuinely present in 
himself. What was in Nietzsche's mind, 
when he did not go too far, was like that 
which was in Emerson's mind when he 
said, "If I am the Devil's child, I will 
live from the Devil." But, unfortunately, 
this self-assertiveness can be terribly over- 
done, with the result that the person sub- 
ject to it becomes an advocate of criticism 
gone mad, instead of a center of helpful- 
ness to his neighbors and his community. 

One should remember Shakespeare's 
striking lines: 

. . . " O, it is excellent 

To have a giant's strength ; but it is tyrannous 

To use it like a giant." 

The tendency to use one's strength like a 
giant (that is, like an overgrown but im- 
mature being) is the tendency which is 
often cultivated under the false notion that 
to do so is a sign of manly courage; but 
158 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

there are times when the " courage to let the 
courage sink" * is a sign of greater promise, 
both for the individual and for mankind. 

It is with reference to this point that I 
would call attention again to the obliga- 
tion which those persons are under who 
believe, as I do, in the importance of study- 
ing motives with reference to the creative 
forces that underlie them, to realize that 
neither self-assertion, nor efficiency, nor 
the "will to power "can be taken as a final 
goal. It is quite amazing how prevalent 
the contrary notion is. How much easier 
it is to arouse a cry of sympathy for such 
martial or stoical appeals as those con- 
tained in the "Invictus" by Henley, and 
Kipling's " If," than for many a far nobler 
appeal that relies on the belief that deep- 
seated, genuine devotion to the common 
welfare, as expressing our complete selves, 
is the only standard on which we should 
ultimately rely ! 

1 Arthur Hugh Clough : "The Higher Courage." 
159 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

The moment individualism ceases to be 
a stepping-stone to something better and 
gets itself ranked as a goal to be pursued 
in and for itself alone, it unmasks itself as 
a sign that the development of the indi- 
vidual received a check at an earlier stage, 
and that we have before us a situation of 
immaturity. 

Analogous to the side lines and rela- 
tively blind alleys referred to in the fore- 
going pages is the strong craving which is 
felt by every one from time to time, and 
by some persons in an insistent form, to 
escape from the steep and narrow path of 
responsibility and effort and to get back 
into conditions of rest and pleasure. This 
craving for relaxation and irresponsibility 
is the longing to get back into the period 
of childhood, not as it exists, but as we 
picture it to ourselves. The childhood of 
most persons is not wholly a time of un- 
alloyed happiness, but often a period of 
renunciation, sorrow, and disappointment. 

160 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

The infant is no sooner born than he begins 
to indicate by his cries (as Ferenczi has so 
well explained) his dim sense of loss. And 
then and there begins the longing for what 
has been and is no more, which never 
wholly ceases. 

Happiness and unhappiness occur, in 
childhood as in later years, not continu- 
ously, but in alternation. The sickening 
suspicion that one is "not wanted," the 
dread of isolation and of reprobation or 
self -reprobation, the fears of ridicule and 
of the dark and a thousand kindred fears 
represent situations not to be ignored. 
The image of childhood which the adult 
delights to dwell upon contains in far 
greater abundance and in purer form the 
characteristics that make the period a 
golden one than does the period itself. 
Art and literature also have constantly 
conspired with the imagination of each 
individual to make this phase that which 
we would fain believe it to have been. 
161 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

It is true, however, that every individual, 
as well in adult life as in infancy and old 
age, instinctively supplements the details 
of the world of his actual knowledge and of 
his toil and pain, with the far wider and 
more satisfying world of his imagination, 
and escapes when he can from the former 
to the latter, just as many people escape — 
if they can find excuse to do so — from the 
situations of actual responsibility to situa- 
tions from which responsibility is absent. 1 

An analogy might be pointed out be- 
tween this process of retrogression and the 
analogous process well known to go on as 
one of the features of evolution. Animal 
species and plants revert to forms that 
maintain themselves more easily, — that 
is, to forms that do not require so much 
vital energy for their maintenance as the 
more complex forms from which the rever- 
sion has taken place. In the old saying of 
doubtful accuracy, "If you scratch a Rus- 

1 See Faguet's recent book, "The Dread of Responsibility." 
162 



INSTINCTS AND IDEALS 

sian you will find a Tartar," we see the 
hint of another form of this reversion, and 
the imagination of any one, even when not 
stimulated by the history of war, will 
supply plenty of instances of like kind. 
The state indicated by the name "Tartar" 
could be better expressed in psychological 
terms as the state, so common in child- 
hood, when the tendency is present which 
the adult, in looking back upon it, char- 
acterizes as cruel. People are too ready 
to accept these tendencies in themselves 
and the motives that go with them, with- 
out realizing the importance of hunting 
them to their lairs and calling them by 
names that need not necessarily be "hard" 
in the adult sense, but should clearly char- 
acterize their true origin. 

Too easy contentment is the condition 
to be mainly dreaded. The whole river 
of life, source and all, belongs inferentially 
to every man ; but in order to enter into 
the value of this possession, we should 

163 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

learn to see its dangerous cataracts and 
whirlpools as well as the calm reaches over 
which we may pass to and fro without 
danger. If we must carry within the 
depths of our lives, without realizing that 
we do so, an Unshapen Land of emotions 
where Gorgons and Titans have their 
home, we should remember that the deni- 
zens of this unshapen land represent sources 
of undifferentiated energy which we, like 
Perseus, may conquer and make our own. 
Finally, I wish to forestall the criticism 
which might easily be made, that I have 
said nothing about Fear as a source of 
human motives. I admit the fact and 
would only say that fear shows itself, on 
close analysis, to be mainly important, in 
the development of the child, as a product 
of undue desire or longing. We learn to 
fear largely through learning to entertain 
uncontrolled longings and cravings. Thus 
the primary object of our fears is our 
emotions, or ourselves. 

164 



Chapter VI 
An Attempt at Synthesis 

"Line in nature is not found ; 

Unit and universe are round ; 

In vain produced, all rays return ; 

Evil will bless, and ice will burn." * 

" Uriel," R. W. Emerson 

THERE is perhaps no single passage 
in any of Emerson's subtle poems 
that expresses his philosophy of life 
better than the one here quoted. The 
same thought underlies many of his writ- 

1 In the explanatory notes to Emerson's poems written by his 
son, E. W. Emerson, this passage occurs : 

"From boyhood Emerson was familiar with 'Paradise Lost,' 
and Uriel, the bright Archangel of the Sun, would best see the 
vast orbits, the returns and compensations, the harmony and 
utter order of the Universe, — God in all. This did away with 
Original Sin, a separate principle of Evil, hopeless Condemnation, 
Mediation, — for Emerson saw in Nature a symbol. The Law 
was alike in matter and spirit. He had shaken off dogma and 
tradition and found that the Word 

Still floats upon the morning wind, 
Still whispers to the willing mind." 

165 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

ings and, among others, the striking poem 
"Compensation," which is quoted in part 
on an earlier page. 

Why is it that these poems fascinate 
some readers and repel others? Is the 
attraction which they exert due only to 
the challenge to our wits brought by the 
paradoxes which they present; or do we 
feel that these paradoxes contain vital 
truths of universal application but such as 
lend themselves to poetical statement by 
reason of their subtlety? 

If I can answer these questions satis- 
factorily, or, rather, if I can make intelli- 
gible an affirmative answer to the last 
question, I shall feel that I have justified 
the assertion made on an early page, — 
namely, that it ought to be possible to 
make a synthesis of the two groups of 
motives here considered, of such a sort as 
to bring out the best meanings of both. 

Emerson's idea, which is the idea of the 
philosophical school of thought for which 

166 



AN ATTEMPT AT SYNTHESIS 

he stands, is that progress consists in an 
eternal seeking, a never-ending attempt to 
find ever new and richer meanings in life. 

"God offers to every mind its choice 
between truth and repose. Take which 
you please, — you can never have both." 

The powerful thinker, Lessing, whose 
" Nathan der Weise " has stimulated specu- 
lation in so many minds, wrote, in another 
connection, a searching passage bearing on 
this problem, of which I offer here a free 
translation. 

"If God should offer me the Truth in his 
right hand, and in his left hand the Search 
for Truth, even burdened with the condition 
that the search would be in vain, I would 
humbly take the treasure which the left 
hand offered, saying, "Father, here I rest 
my choice. Absolute Truth remains for 
Thee alone." 

Let no one feel mocked and disappointed 
by having this perpetual search held up to 
him as a goal. Is it not true that God 
167 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

himself, as the creative spirit of the uni- 
verse, is to be thought of in these terms, — 
namely, as an Eternal Renewer of evolu- 
tion? Is not His function the utilization 
of self-activity for the perpetual recreating 
of endless spirals leading up to self-conscious 
beings who have the power to conceive 
the whole scheme, and to make perpetually, 
in their turn, an ever renewed search for 
higher forms of self-expression? A uni- 
verse constructed in this fashion implies, 
it is true, incessant conflict, and at times 
these conflicts may impress one as intol- 
erable. But can any one formulate a uni- 
verse containing free beings yet from which 
conflict should be excluded? This has 
been attempted in the past and is 
attempted at the present day by those 
who seek rest and expect to find it in an- 
other world than this. But wiser people 
realize that a Heaven of rest would be an 
intolerable prison-house, which no con- 
ceivable number of compensatory pleas- 

168 



AN ATTEMPT AT SYNTHESIS 

ures should induce us to accept. Instead 
of shunning conflicts, ought we not to wel- 
come them and learn to see in them new 
means for gaining insight? It may be 
said that a doctrine of this sort is suit- 
able perhaps for those whose lives are 
crowned with comfort, but that it is a 
cruel doctrine to apply to those on whom 
conflicts bear with special stress and those 
who have to suffer pain. It is true that 
the lot of such persons is hard to bear; 
but it has been borne innumerable times, 
not only with resignation, but in a better 
spirit still. It is idle to expect that we can 
understand the universal scheme in each 
one of its details, but unreasonable to 
demand that because of this inability we 
should reject the work of our reason 
altogether and refuse to see even the out- 
line of the scheme. There are many lots 
which it is difficult to endure, but none 
that would not be lightened if the mind 
could get a vision of the truth, or could 

169 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

feel the influence of this truth in an intui- 
tive or religious sense. 

Let it not be supposed, however, that 
the outcomes proposed by Emerson, in the 
form of the richer meanings which the uni- 
verse offers to all who will seek for them, 
are to be had only for the asking. To assert 
this would be to overlook a number of 
important facts. When he says that evil 
will bless, and (as in "Compensation") 
that our own best selves rush, in spite of 
all obstacles, to meet us, he announces 
what may be, not what must be. The 
determination of the actual outcome rests 
with us. When pain, adversity, sorrow, 
or temptation make their challenge to the 
human soul, they may call forth a courage 
and faith that seem to be born of the 
need for them, and thus lift the life of him 
who undergoes the trial to a higher plane. 

One of the most typical forms of the 
rounding out of the circle such as Emer- 
son refers to, with the result that what 

170 



AN ATTEMPT AT SYNTHESIS 

may be poetically defined as "evil" shall 
be found to bless, is given in the history of 
compensation as applied to conditions of 
organic imperfection. The deaf Beethoven 
expresses his power of inward hearing in 
symphonies which — one may assume — 
without his deafness he could never have 
produced. The blind and deaf Helen 
Keller discovers a world of beauty and 
music richer than that in which she other- 
wise would have lived. In a somewhat 
similar fashion the blinded and careworn 
Faust, abandoning as vain his attempt 
to discover happiness in merely nominal 
pleasures, learns at last that he has in him 
the power to find a better satisfaction in a 
life of wholly different sort. 

Emerson's conception can be utilized 
still further as a means of clothing with a 
new value some of the lessons of expe- 
rience. The introspection of psycho- 
analysis, for example, which most people 
object to at the outset because they con- 
171 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

sider it as equivalent to what ordinarily 
passes by the name of introspection, is 
found in the end, if all goes well, to be 
something very different. When we look 
at ourselves with morbid introspection we 
gain from this effort (which is really a 
means for securing gratification) only the 
intensification of an objectionable emotion. 
But if for this morbid scrutiny we con- 
scientiously substitute a rational self- 
scrutiny, the result is useful. Every effort 
has in it something of reason, something 
of feeling, and something of will. And 
the more we introduce reason into this 
mixture, the less important, relatively 
speaking, becomes the part played by 
emotion, until, as the final outcome, the 
emotion itself becomes an element in the 
furtherance of rational effort. 1 In a simi- 

1 It was with this idea in view — the idea, namely, that the 
human passions and emotions should, as a rule, if rightly inter- 
preted and assimilated, be able to contribute something of value 
to life in its best form — that I placed at the beginning of the 
account of the psycho-analytic movement (Chapter III) the 

172 



AN ATTEMPT AT SYNTHESIS 

lar fashion it is found that temptation may 
be converted into power, and the intoler- 
able distress due to repressed emotions into 
a willingness to take one's share of the 
world's troubles. Self-assertion need not 
be cultivated for its own sake, but should 
be exchanged for the cultivation of power 
to be used for the sake of the community. 
Childhood ceases to be the parent of 
objectionable tendencies and takes its place 
as the emblem of all that is best in human 
nature. 

Our real world, think of it in whatever 
terms we may, is a world modified and 
adorned by fancy, and the problem for 
each individual is to make it correspond 
to the expression of his best self and the 
best selves of other men. Every one longs 
for rest, but not for the repose of the 
Lotus-Eaters. The only rest that really 

glowing outburst in which the Earth Spirit tells the shrinking 
Faust how he takes the lives of men, just as they are, and weaves 
them into a garment for God. 

" Nil humanum a me alienum puto," 

173 



HUMAN MOTIVES 

satisfies is that which comes through the 
discovery of better adaptations between 
ourselves and the life around us. The 
justification for introducing in a book on 
motives the reasoning followed in this 
chapter is that the choice of motives, 
whether voluntarily or instinctively made, 
must depend in the final analysis on the 
standards arrived at through education, 
the true function of which consists in lead- 
ing to the discovery of deeper and deeper 
relationships between the outside world 
and the inner life. 

I conclude this chapter, as I began it, 
with a quotation from Emerson, the "Two 
Rivers." 

"Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, 1 
Repeats the music of the rain ; 
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit 
Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain. 

Thou in thy narrow banks art pent : 
The stream I love unbounded goes 

1 "The Concord River." 
174 



AN ATTEMPT AT SYNTHESIS 

Through flood and sea and firmament ; 
Through light, through life, it forward flows. 

I see the inundation sweet, 
I hear the spending of the stream 
Through years, through men, through Nature fleet, 
Through love and thought, through power and 
dream. 

Musketaquit, a goblin strong, 
Of shard and flint makes jewels gay ; 
They lose their grief who hear his song, 
And where he winds is the day of day. 

So forth and brighter fares my stream, — 
Who drink it shall not thirst again ; 
No darkness stains its equal gleam, 
And ages drop in it like rain." 

R. W. Emerson. 



THE END 



175 



INDEX 



Beethoven, Ludwig von, 

164, 171. 
Bergson, Henri, 61. 
Bowne, Borden P., 66n. 
Breuer, J., 74, 75, 85. 

Charcot, J. M., 75. 

Childhood, 78, 79, 82-84, 
95; play, 96-97; de- 
velopment, 98-100, 153- 
155 ; education in, 105- 
133, 160, 161, 174; (see 
Imagination). 

Clough, Arthur H., 159. 

Creative energy, 3-10, 29- 
34, 150, 151, 168. 

Dante, 16. 

Darwin, Charles, 20, 88. 

Dreams, 30. 

Education, 69, 70, 92; 
relation to psycho-analy- 
sis, 105-133; in relation 
of outer to inner life, 
174. 

Egoism, table, 141 ; 143. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 27, 
157, 165, 170, 171; 



quoted, 1, 5, 35, 47, 63, 

64, 66, 120, 123, 158, 
165, 167, 174-175. 

Fagttet, E., 162. 
Fantasies, see Childhood, 

Imagination. 
Fear, 164. 
Ferenczi, $., 161. 
Freedom, inherent in life, 

10, 13, 17. 
Freud, Sigmund, 71, 72, 74, 

75, 76, 85-87, 89, 90, 92, 

101. 
Froebel, Friedrich, 96. 

Genetic method, 20, 32. 
Goethe, 171, 173?i ; quoted, 
57, 67. 

Harris, W. T., 66rc. 
Healy, William, llOrc. 
Henderson, L. J., 124. 
Henley, W. E., 159. 

Ideals, as a source of 
motives, 10, 11, 12, 39; 
logical justification of, 

65, 66. 



177 



INDEX 



Imagination, table, 141 ; 

144-146. 
Immanence, doctrine of, 

134-139. 
Individualism, table, 141 ; 

156, 157. 
Infancy, see Childhood. 

Jackson, J. Hughlings, 
121, 122, 126. 

Kant, Immanuel, 53. 
Keller, Helen, 51, 171; 

quoted, 52. 
Keyser, C. J., 66n. 
Kipling, Rudyard, 159. 

Lessing, G. E., 167. 
Limitation, significance of, 
15. 

Maturity (and immatur- 
ity), 19-21, 132, 135, 
136, 142, 158, 160. 

Motives, of constructive- 
ness, 2-10; table, 141; 
of adaptation and com- 
promise, 10-15, 94 ; 
table, 141 ; antagonistic 
sources, 1-34. 

Myths and fairy tales, 26, 
73, 83, 99, 100; 114, 132, 
142, 173. 

Nietzsche, 157, 158. 

Parents and teachers, 



value of psycho-analysis 
for, 112-116. 

Philosophic method, 18, 23 ; 
as contrasted with psy- 
cho-analytic method, 22- 
31. 

Physical laws, relation to 
mental laws, 55, 56, 60, 
61. 

Plato, 28. 

Psycho-analysis, general 
account of, 67-104; re- 
lation to education, 69- 
70, 105-133 ; practical 
aims, 106-108; thera- 
peutic action, 132, 133; 
relation to morbid intro- 
spection, 171, 172. 

Rationalization, table, 
141 ; 148, 149. 

Reactions, varieties of, 
compared, 123-131 ; of 
defense, 103, 129; (see 
also Symptoms). 

Reasoning, inferential, 24, 
41; philosophic, 35-66. 

Religion, rational basis of, 
35-65 ; scientific criti- 
cisms of, 37, 46 ; relation 
to personality, 40-41 ; 
meaning of God, 57-58 ; 
popular attitude toward, 
36, 48; ceremonials, 39, 
40 ; superstition, 39, 40 ; 
(see also 165-174). 

Repression, 12, 13, 14, 71, 



178 



INDEX 



100-104 ; as affecting 
judgment, 22 ; (see also 
Unconscious). 
Royce, Josiali, 56, 66n. 

Self- activity, 61, 62, 150, 

168. 
Self-relation, 24, 45, 58. 
Sex emotions, 85-95. 
Shakespeare, quoted, 158. 
Sickness and health, mutual 

relation, 117-122. 
Social relationships, 14, 38, 

39. 
Stevenson, R. L., 108. 



Symptoms, 
117-133. 



as reactions 



Unconscious, The, 101, 
102, 128, 129; respon- 
sibility for, 129, 130. 

Universe, personality of, 
42-45 ; rationality of, 
64, 65. 

Unpicturable world, 49- 
54. 

Wordsworth, William, 
quoted, 2; 96, 153. 



179 



MIND AND HEALTH SERIES 



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